Locomotoring

As far as deep sky photo goes, this is a rough draft of a future photo – the horsehead nebula and flame nebula in the Orion constellation. It is the photo I have been waiting for since we took the first photos of the Andromeda galaxy. When I started, and even now, there aren’t many deep sky objects I can name by sight. The horsehead has a characteristic shape etched in my mind by NASA Hubble images. It is also a beginner deep sky target that offers an opportunity to get infinitely better as skills progress.

It is taken with our brand new deep sky photography setup, a telescope and a dedicated astro camera. We have also adopted a suite of brand new software, N.I.N.A. (In my head, when I say Nina, I say it like Marlon Brando calls out for Stella), Hocus Focus (“Awww…”) and PHD (literally, “Push Here Dummy”). The setup is teetering on a mount that is barely able to handle the combined weight of the camera, the telescope, the guiding scope, the auto focuser, the PC controller. The filter wheel isn’t on yet.

We are determined to be up and running before spring arrives and skies get clear. To practice, we are shooting at targets that are accessible from our tiny courtyard that is partially shaded by a large oak tree on one side and a criss-cross of electric wires on two sides with an old school halogen street light.

We are in Bortle 6 skies in the Bay Area. With naked eyes, I can see a handful of stars. Pinnacles National Park with its Bortle 3-4 skies is a short weekend trip from home. Death Valley National Park with its Bortle 1 sky is a long weekend trip. While these dark skies are not far, the National Parks don’t come with internet. We simply can’t troubleshoot a chain of complex gadgets and software in the field. In fact, we wonder about the good old days when people got into complex technical fields without aid of specialized forums on the internet. We suspect they had several good friends, birds of a feather. We have one too. They are called Gemini, they can be fed the screenshot of the error message and they find relevant solutions quickly.

It has been raining hard this winter break. Being able to take this photo through the cracks in the cloud helped me get my fidgets out. It took several hours of troubleshooting, several hours of shooting (3 minutes each) and several hours of processing (integration, color calibration etc).