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Astrophotography Emission Nebula Reflection Nebula

Astrophoto: C31 – First Light of my Mono Setup – 01/25

The first light of my first mono setup is finally done! I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time… and the imaging session had a few surprises in store.

I had truly been waiting a long time for this imaging session. The process of selecting and acquiring the equipment, followed by configuration and, lastly, collimation, took quite some time. But above all, the miserable weather was the main culprit. Even on January 21, 2025, the conditions were far from ideal.

The absolute focus that evening wasn’t on the quality of the result but rather on running through the entire process. My goal was to capture a complete set of LRGB data to dive into image processing and to set up EKOS properly, all as preparation for my first real mono project.

Still, my patience was running thin. A limited window of cloud-free skies, persistent high-altitude fog, frost, and high humidity weren’t enough to stop me from giving it a try.

Another suboptimal factor was the rough focus of the guide camera. I had skipped fine-tuning in favor of maximizing imaging time. Guiding performance is definitely an area for improvement. Lower humidity and an optimized guide camera focus are the obvious adjustments to make here.

Session Analysis

Overall, the guiding was on the lower end of acceptable. Always below 1 arcsecond, but far from the targeted guiding quality of 0.5 arcseconds. But as I already mentioned, that’s an area for improvement.

The session started off really well with the green filter. Ten frames in a row were quickly captured. Due to the cold, I stayed in the office and stepped out briefly, so I wanted to manage the filter change remotely. As you can see in the analysis, plate solving kept failing repeatedly—it nearly drove me insane—I was in a hurry! The issue turned out to be that the mount had randomly pointed in the completely wrong direction. If it’s outside a defined deviation, the plate-solving process simply can’t find a solution.

Aside from the increasing high-altitude fog and clouds becoming visible, the rest of the session went quite well. One thing I noticed during the manual filter changes was that, due to the frosty temperatures and high humidity, a mist or dew film quickly formed on the filters.

Processing of the picture

Well, my first LRGB mono workflow needed to be developed. Thanks to the amazing material and resources shared by the astrophotography community, it wasn’t a real obstacle—just a bit of time spent in PixInsight.

However, the processing quickly hit me with a shock: the green channel showed a “nebula-like structure” that didn’t belong there. It was so prominent that it couldn’t be retouched. I suspect that the previously mentioned formation of a dew film had frozen on the filter—such a shame.

In the end, I decided to process the stars in RGB, but there was no saving the nebula. Fortunately, the issue was limited to the green channel, which made it less catastrophic. I ended up creating an LRBB image and managed to eliminate the excess green during processing.

Full resolution on Astrobin:

Astrometric Solution of the picture:

The image primarily features two large nebula structures. At the bottom right is the Flaming Star Nebula, also known as Caldwell 31 or Sharpless 229, accompanied by the reflection nebula vdB 34. At the top center of the image is the larger nebula Sharpless 236.

Additionally, the entire region shown in the constellation Auriga is permeated by the emission nebula Sharpless 230.

Session Details:

TelescopeBaader Apo 95 CaF2 – Travel Companion
Focal Length590mm
Erecting LenseBaader M68 Field Flattener
CameraToupTek SkyEye62AM
FilterBaader LRGB CMOS Optimized 50.4mm
MountSkywatcher HEQ5 Pro, Belt and Hypertuned
Guiding EquipmentPegasus Astro Indigo OAG
Guiding CameraToupTek GPM462M
Photography Date01/21/2025
Exposure-Time LightsL 20x180s, R 10x180s, G 10x180s, B 10x180s
Correction framesFLATS, DARKFLATS, DARKS
SensitivityGAIN 100
Processing Date01/23/2025
Software StackStellarmate OS, PixInsight, Affinity Photo
Capture PlaceKoblenz, Germany

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