The Pacman Nebula is a bright Ha and O3 emission nebula in Cassiopeia. The image below was captured over three nights in August.
For this image I used the Svbony SV220 dual band filter with the Touptek AR533C. Integration time was about 12hrs (148 x 300s). The OTA and mount were my 70mm EDT-F and HEQ5pro.
I processed the stars separately from the nebula before recombining them. Star colours are little off but more natural than unprocessed or pure white. I used the Pixinsight SCNR tool on the normal and inverted image to remove green and purple tints leaving just reddish and bluish stars.
The whole nebula is strongly Ha emitting but by exaggerating other wavelengths we can show the presence of O3 nebula. To do this the image was processed using an SHO script and various colour masks were used to highlight mainly Ha (Golden) areas and with blue areas indicating Oxygen 3 too. Generalised Hyperbolic stretch was used to exaggerate the light cloud structure and lowlight the darker regions.
Posted inDeep Sky, Nebula|Comments Off on The Pacman Nebula NGC 281, SH 2-184
There is no information about this filter draw on Touptek’s website although I did find a reseller with basic outer dimensions and an installation video by Touptek! – none of it linked to by Touptek’s own website. That being said, here is my first impression.
The filter draw is well packaged, it is supplied with the 6x m2.5 crosshead screws needed for attaching it to the front plate of Touptek’s and ZWO’s newest cameras. Bundled loose outside the box was a screw driver which is a nice touch.
Fitting the filter draw is very simple, decide which way you want it oriented and screw in to place:
(The dust is mine!)
The filter draw holder is accurately machined to 20mm depth, my vernier calliper showed a remarkable 20.00mm!
As my setup uses M42 and M48 threads I needed to purchase an M54M to M48F 0mm adapter. I had hoped to use the M42 16.5mm spacer provided with my Touptek and ZWO cameras but their outer diameter is too small to lock in to place on the filter draw flange so I cobbled together a series of M42 5mm spacers and shims to get the 17.8 mm I think I need to give me the 55.3mm back focus for my coma-correctors with a filter fitted.
The draw seems very will made, the three magnets give a firm clunk lock. The draw will fit either way in the holder so you can flip the filter spacing to the camera. This is either a blessing or a curse as that might muck up your flats if you are switching filters in an imaging session and don’t place then consistently the same way in the holder.
The filter draw internal dimension is about 9.8mm, the filter holder is 3.8mm therefore filters must be 6mm or thinner. My generic UV/IR filer is 7mm thick and wont allow me to slide the draw in. Temporarily, I’ve fitted the draw and then screwed in the filter from the front – not ideal!
I plan to use an UV/IR filter and a Dual Band filter with my ATR533C so now I am on the look out for thin-enough filters!
In Summary:
I am happy I chose this filter draw. The cost is very good compared to other manufactures and it is a very well made filter draw that I am sure will work well for me when I get compatible filters. But Touptek let themselves down with the lack of documentation. It fits recent Touptek cameras but there is nothing on the website about compatibility with them and older models. Its actually difficult to find this filter draw on the website – it isn’t where you would expect it to be, in the the accessories section.
Posted inAstronomy Gear, Equipment|Comments Off on Touptek 54mm 2″ filter draw – initial review.
Touptek cameras are very good performers and they seem to get rebranded by almost everyone. They are also priced very competitively, particularly if you buy direct.
Finding out what you get in the box if you buy a camera from Touptek can be tricky so I decided to document what I received.
In 2024 the ATR3CMOS09000KPA ,as it is also known, bought direct from Touptek comes in a box well protected with foam packing.
As well as the camera, in the box you will find:
12v 3A power supply and AC power cord
USB3 1.5m cable
2″ to m42 adapter
1.25″ m42 adapter
M42M-M42F 21mm spacer
M42M-M48F 16.5mm spacer
M48M-M42F 0mm adapter
The camera is fitted with a front plate which seem standard across Touptek’s recent range of cooled cameras, it provides 17.5mm back focus to the sensor and is threaded for M42. The plate also has 6 x m2.5 threaded holes (5mm deep) for mounting the 54mm threaded 2″ filter draw or (ZWO??) compatible filter wheel.
If you want to connect the camera directly to your scope then the 2″ and 1.25″ adapters will work for you. The 1.25″ adapter will allow you to thread a filter on its nose. The 2″ adapter is lightly threaded for 2″ filters but from my testing it isn’t a great solution as they only just thread on. I would worry about removing the filter if I over tightened it.
The other adapters (16.5+21mm) combined will give you the correct spacing for 55mm back focus that is needed for most coma-correctors.
The overall feel of the camera is quality and precision, no sharp edges or rough machining, it is very well put together.
The rear of the camera features a Touptek standard plate:
There is space for 4 LEDs to be fitted but the fourth one is missing (not required on this model) so it is blanked off with a sticker. I found this an low-tech solution a bit surprising on an otherwise very polished product. I guess it saves a design skew and stops questions from the customers about an LED that never lights up.
I downloaded the Touptek software (Toupsky) that includes the native drivers for the camera to confirm the camera is working. I’m happy to say it all worked first time and I quickly got the camera cooled, a dark frame image captured and a histogram displayed. I can report the sensor looks clean and the cooler works well to supress noise and hot pixels.
Overall I’m very happy with first impressions. I’ve not done any imaging yet but I plan to use it with Asrtoberry (INDI) for my portable setup and N.I.N.A. for my observatory.
(Update)
I’ve abandoned Astroberry for now and have been using a mini-PC running Windows 11 and N.I.N.A. The clouds have not been very helpful but over 3 nights but I managed about 3.5 hours of imaging under very variable conditions. So here is Messier 27 as my first-light :
Camera: Touptek ATR533C
OTA: Altair Astro 70mm ED F + 0.8FR
Mount: HEQ5 Pro
43x300s integration.
Posted inAstronomy Gear, Equipment|Comments Off on Touptek ATR533C – IMX533 Cooled DSO Colour Camera. An Un-Boxing and First Light
In May of 2023 a new supernova was reported in galaxy M101. M101 is easy to image from my house and is big enough in the sky that a lot of detail can be resolved. Supernovas often appear brighter than the the galaxy they reside in and this one was reported to be very bright indeed.
I quickly got my gear in place and over 3 nights (26th-28th of May) grabbed enough sub-frames to make a decent image. Unfortunately there was a lot of misty high cloud and light pollution so contrast wasn’t the best, but I am happy with the detail I pulled out.
The above image shows the stack of all luminance frames before any stretching. I have circled the “new star” (click it to see the big picture and the supernova).
Above is the same luminance only image with just basic stretching to reveal many stars and the galaxy. Below is my final image combining L, R,G,B and Ha:
A screen shot of comments made by Peter & Pete on Youtube showing that they don’t care what is true, they only care about their own world view.
It is sad that some in society are now unable to distinguish between scientific truth and opinion. In my opinion this shows the inadequacy of our education systems to arm them with critical thinking skills.
Perhaps its only fair to state what I think a scientific “truth” is. In my opinion it is a statement that fits the observed facts it is describing and it can be tested in multiple ways to the limits of societies ability and knowledge. There is a wider definition and discussion summarised nicely here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth
When things can only be partially tested then those ideas are not truths they are still in the realms of theory but they are still miles ahead of an “opinion”. Scientific truths are essentially things that fit the facts as best we know. Theories are models of reality that fit the facts we are able to check at the time but may not survive without modification when we learn more in the future. A lot of theories have become accepted as fact in this way.
The trouble with “truths” is that there are so many that no one person can test them all so we are asked to trust people who are supposed to know more on the subject than we do. We choose thought leaders to listen to, some are imposed (e.g. teachers). There have always been people who abuse this trust to spin falsehoods, using personality and power to convince people less able/knowledgeable of lies.
Trump is a horrifying example of this, antivaxxers are another. Trump visibly succeeding in what he does is has impact wider than just politics, its breeds greater distrust in the nature of truth in all aspects of life. With his use of “alternative facts” he says lies are ok and you can even get away with it. In my view, by lieing so easily and with such conviction he has singularly accelerated societies distrust in all our institutions whether it be politics, medicine or science. This growing fear/distrust leads to sad outcomes such as Peter & Pete.
Posted inRandom Stuff|TaggedAnti-science|Comments Off on Society and “truth”, Peter and Pete – a sad reflection
This is NGC 4631 and NGC 4656-7 better known as the Whale and Hockey stick galaxies. Imaged over several nights 21-25th April 2022, I managed only a few hours total due to bad weather.
This is a “first light” image taken with my new wide-field setup.
Wide filed shot using the Samyang 135mm F2 lens and ASI1600mm Pro
Here we have the star Sadr in the constellation of Cygnus. Using narrowband Ha (56mins) and Oiii (30mins) filters I’ve captured the glowing dust in the region surrounding the star. Not bad for a first image. This widefield shot shows Sadr in the middle surrounded by nebula (IC 1318) but also included is the so-called propeller (top-left), many dark regions, NGC 6914 a blue reflection nebula (very faint, middle left region) and the Crescent nebula (NGC 6888, top right).
This lens is fantastic for grabbing photons quickly from a very wide field of view. I plan many more sessions with it and will probably revisit this area when we have astronomical dark back in August.
I’ve owned the 135mm for over 2 yrs but just didn’t have the time to put together a rig for it. I’ll make a separate blog entry on the construction of the mount.
Conditions were much better and my guiding is considerably better with <> 0.6 total rms. With careful processing I am able to extract detail at the limit of the scope and camera performance when seeing is good, as it was last night.
It’s a bad time of year to image as astronomical dark is very short (around 3.5 hrs now), but you can’t turn down the opportunity for a moonless clear night! With 1hr per RGB filter and 30min of Ha squeezed in the result is a detailed but noisy image.
This is NGC 4725 and cohorts. It looks NGC 4725 had a tangle with 4747 and neither came off well.
This is NGC 4725, to the top left is NGC 4747 which has been disrupted by NGC4725.
Imaged from the 22nd to 25th March, total integration time was 9 hours and 15 minutes, (2h20 Blue, 2hr53 Green, 2hr05 Red, 1h56 Ha). Imaged with my ASI1600mm pro, ZWO filters and trusty Orion Optics UK 250mm Newt on my CEM70G. Captured with N.I.N.A, processed in PixInsight and tweaked in Paint Shop pro.
There are more galaxies here than you first realise.
That was a remarkable few days of good weather with DEC guiding often running as low as 0.23 rms and even RA sub 0.4 for much of the time. I’d like to think much of that performance was down to my re-jigging the balance and fine tuning the meshing of the worm gears – I had had trouble getting below 1 arc-seconds rms for the last 2 years. I know others also reported good guiding in many parts of the UK on the same days so its probably just freaky weather. Time will tell.
IC410 is a dusty star forming region about 12,000 light years away.
I’ve finally grabbed enough O3 to attempt an HOO combination. This time of year, the nebula stays above the neighbours’ trees for about 2 hrs after dark. I doubt I’ll be collecting more on this one until next year.
This image is the result of 9hrs Ha, 7hrs O3 and 45 mins RGB for the stars. By far the best stars were the Ha ones – that data was collected earlier in the year when the target was higher. I used Ha stars as a mask which tightened them a lot.
The initial HOO mix was Ha, O3, O3*.85+Ha*.15. I had to apply TGV noise reduction on chrominance because the O3 was still pretty noisy. I’m quite happy with the overall results for the amount of data.
The Tadpole Nebula IC410 in HOO with RGB stars
The mono-colour Ha image reveals a lot of structure too and is overall a bit sharper.
