Deep Sky Objects

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During my army days, I was taught to use Orion belt (the 3 bright stars in the 1st picture) to tell the North (which is pointing to the left as seen in 1st picture) and I've imaged the Great Orion Nebula (M42) in Mersing yesterday using an extremely simple and portable setup which weigh less than 3kg only, excluding the tripod. It was captured with an unmodified dslr without any filter under rural sky condition. The uneven illumination was due to differential atmospheric absorption and perhaps a bit of residual light pollution, which are common in astrophotography. The object was found using the astronomy tool which i've developed but the Orion belt was actually visible to the naked eyes.

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Here's another experiment. The Orion Nebula was shot using unmodified crop dslr at iso1600 on a tripod.

1st image to show the noise level and lack of details of M42.



2nd image shows better signal-to-noise ratio by stacking 107 images. We can see more details now.



Final image is processed to remove uneven light illumination.



The result will be much better if we were to use a modified dslr camera.

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The nucleus of the most talked-about Comet ISON is still intact as of my latest image! Some astronomers predicted that it will disintegrate before 28 November 2013, where it will whip around our sun at a speed of 425,000mph! If it survives, the Icy ball MIGHT become brighter than the Venus and put on a spectacular show for the people in Northern hemisphere in December 2013.

Comet ISON is currently in our inner solar system when i shot this image and it will make its closest approach to the Sun on 28 November 2013 making Comet ISON a sungrazing comet. Comets are notoriously unpredictable and so, nobody can be sure if it will survive its close pass to the Sun.

Red comet tails are caused by the light of the Sun reflected from dust. The thickest part of the dust tail is beneath other layers of dust and that reddens the reflected light much like the Sun turns reddish when it is on the horizon and the light has to pass through more of the atmosphere.

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Nucleus of Comet ISON



Distance traveled by ISON within 54mins exposure time.



Timelapse of Comet ISON on 27 October 2013. NGC 3428 is also visible in the video near the two brightest stars on the lower left.

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While many are anticipating the outcome of Comet ISON, Comet Lovejoy will share the same part of the sky as Comet ISON this month and it presents cool astrophotography opportunity for skywatchers and astronomers. Besides Comet ISON and Lovejoy, Comet 2P/Encke and C/2012 X1 Linear will be in the same quadrant of the sky as well this month. It's pretty unusual to have 4 relatively bright comets sharing the same sky at a time so I am sure skywatchers and astrophotographers wouldn't want to miss this great opportunity !

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Comet ISON as of 04 November 2013



Inverted image Comet ISON showing new ION tail. Published in Universe Today

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Comet Lovejoy

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Comet Lovejoy will be located near Cancer constellation on 11 Nov 2013 morning in Singapore. At around 2.30am local time, it will be at about 20 degrees above horizon and at least more than 60 degrees above horizon before dawn.

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A timelapse video showing the journey of C/2012 S1 (ISON) and C/2013 R1 (LOVEJOY) on 11 November 2013. The video covers 50 minutes of imaging time for ISON and 90 minutes of imaging time for Lovejoy. From the video, you can see the reduced visibility of Comet ISON and Lovejoy as the sky was becoming brighter gradually.

A new possible ion tail emerging from Comet ISON was first observed on 4 November 2013 and ISON's growing dust tail now stretches to more than a full moon's diameter. Comet ISON is now plunging towards the Sun with 2 long tails at a magnitude of around +7 and it is visible in small scopes and strong binoculars. Comet ISON is in front of constellation Virgo this week and it is expected to grow some 2.5 times brighter before it meets Spica, the brightest star in Virgo on 17 November and 18 November.

Comet Lovejoy just passed into the constellation Leo with a magnitude of around +6 and it's an easy binocular object. R1 Lovejoy will remain well placed at 50 to 60 degrees above the northeastern horizon before sunrise through this week for observers from near the Equator.

The comet appears to be moving fast because of smaller field of view and long exposure. Comet ISON was captured using Luminance channel only so I could acquire more frames before sunrise. I have also developed my own web tool (justinngphoto.com/astro) to check weather condition in Asia region and predict the amount of imaging time I have before I head out to hunt for the comets.

Copyright © 2013 Justin Ng Photo. All rights reserved.

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URL: justinngphoto.com
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Previous Timelapse Movie on ISON: vimeo.com/77912917

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Horsehead Nebula

A HaRGB composite which took me 3 months to be able to produce something decent. Partly because I was chasing after Comet ISON and Lovejoy and I also chose to image Horsehead Nebula only when sky condition was favorable without much moonlight interference.