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Well, the New Mexico monsoons ended and here's an image of NGC 6946, the "fireworks" galaxy, a face-on spiral galaxy in Cepheus. Despite having a stellar population of only about 1/2 that of our Milky Way, it has a high rate of new star formation and is classed as an active starburst galaxy. The "fireworks" sobriquet stems from its production of 10 observed supernovae in the past century, roughly 10x as many as that of the Milky Way. Various "peculiar" objects associated with the galaxy have attracted the attention of astronomers over the years, and two of them can be seen in this image. "Hodge's object" is the name given to the bright blue object at the 11:00 position and the "red ellipse" appears at the end of the long spiral arm at the 1:00 position. Hodge's object has recently been conjectured to be an interacting dwarf galaxy superimposed on the disk of NGC 6946, and the red ellipse may be some kind of super bubble or very large supernova remnant - it is huge by any standard. This rendition intentionally corrected for the reddening of the galaxy from dust in our galaxy - with an "as-seen" color balance, the colors in the spiral arms are very subdued. Data capture occurred over a 3-night period in September for a total LRGB integration of 18.3 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC6946_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

Has anyone tried this updated QSI driver yet? I’m curious if it 64 bit. https://qsimaging.com/drivers-software/

NGC 6905, the "Blue Flash" nebula, is a small planetary nebula in Delphinus. The nebula structure is composed of an internal shell with roughly conical extensions along its major axis. The central progenitor is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star and now has roughly 60% of the mass of the Sun, having lost nearly 50% of its original mass through expulsion of the gas shells that form the nebula. The dominant blue-green color comes from ionized oxygen created during the late stages of the star's evolution. The image was captured during 4 nights in June-July 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB+O integration of 12 hours. The small size of the nebula (approx 45 arc-sec) made it a fairly poor target for my setup, so the posted image has been heavily cropped and rescaled. My only excuse is that the summer monsoons were quickly approaching in NM and I wanted to "just get one more image done." :-) https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC6905_LRGB_O3_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

I have a QSI T-adapter for my 600-series camera that has a ring protruding about 5mm from the front face. I am believing from the user drawings that the T-adapter is a .225" thick flat plate with threads. No machined-in or built-in ring, like a spacer, so to speak. Which one is correct? Wanting the flat one for my ONAG. Does anyone have the flat .225 thick T-mount adapter that they would like to sell? Kev

I am having a routine problem with a false camera startup. My system is Scheduler/ACP, Maxim, QSI 632 running with ASCOM driver. After start-up, the Maxim camera window shows the camera to be QSI, the cooler to be running, and the temperature falling. However, if you try to take an image, it will report no camera and error 3001. If allowed, Scheduler will run all night attempting to take images and report them as failed. But, disconnect the camera after start-up and reconnect and it works fine. Something needs adjusting in the startup routine is all I can figure. Not sure what log might provide useful info. I attach startup script. Suggestions please.

NGC 6503 is a "field" dwarf spiral galaxy in the direction of the constellation Draco. The "field" classification means it is not part of a cluster or group and is gravitationally alone, an unusual situation for a spiral galaxy. It has been dubbed the "lost in space" galaxy because it resides at the edge of a vast empty region of space known as the Local Void. It is only 30,000 light-years in size, less than 1/3 the size of our Milky Way galaxy. The image was captured during 4 nights from June-July 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 16 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC6503_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

I looked at the Atik/QSI site and they listed some retailers. I contacted one. They didn’t have the camera listed, they didn’t know the cost, and no idea if or when they might carry it. So does anyone know the cost?

This is an image of M14, one of the bright globular clusters in the Messier list and located about 30K light-years way in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. I chose it as a "hurry-up" target right before the start of the summer monsoons in New Mexico. It’s a very average globular cluster in nearly all respects with one notable exception: it shows a dramatic amount of reddening because of its location near the plane of our galaxy – it has a galactic latitude of only 14 degrees. This means our line-of-sight to the cluster passes through the substantial amount of dust that's in the galactic disk. This accounts for the dominant yellow star colors in the image compared to the more typical blue/white appearance of most globular cluster images. The color balance in the image was done using photometric calibration with foreground stars in order to preserve the reddening effect. The image was captured during a single night in June 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 4.5 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/M14_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

This is an image of Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy, a highly distorted spiral galaxy in Draco about 400M light-years away. The striking "tail" is a stream of gas and new stars that is about 280K light-years long. This tail is believed to have been caused by a tidal interaction between Arp 188 and a smaller galaxy that closely approached it. This interloper galaxy can be seen shining through the disk of its larger companion - it's the small, oblate, blueish object at the 5:00 position relative to the center of Arp 188. Models show that this galaxy probably crossed in front of Arp 188, then orbited around it and now resides about 300K light-years behind it. The field is littered with very distant background galaxies, many of which appear distorted or interacting. A Hubble image of a small sky area immediately surrounding Arp 188 revealed over 6000 such galaxies. The rendition shown here is heavily cropped in order to highlight some of the structural detail in the target. The image was captured during 6 nights in June 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 16 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/Arp188_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

NGC 4157 is a nearly edge-on spiral galaxy in Ursa Major, located about 55M light-years away. Based on its apparent size and distance, its disk is about 125K light-years in diameter, which makes the galaxy somewhat larger than our Milky Way galaxy. Although NGC 4157 is quite photogenic, it seems to get little attention from amateur imagers or, for that matter, professional astronomers. The surrounding background in the image has many distant galaxies including some galaxy clusters at distances of 3-5B light-years. The image was captured during 6 nights in May 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 18.3 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC4157_LRGB_web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

Hi, After having been a long time out of the game I recently learned how to use NINA and as I have two QSI540 wsg colelcting dust I thought I culd take off the dust and use them again, but, yes big but. I can not get going my QSI cameras in NINA. Anybody can help? Thanks and regards Rainer

NGC 4618 (left) and 4625 (right) are two single-armed Magellanic spiral galaxies, so-named because of their resemblance to the single-armed Large Magellanic Cloud. Their asymmetric appearance suggests a strong gravitational interaction between the two. But professional observations indicate the level of interaction has been modest, suggesting instead that the single-armed structures are created by processes intrinsic to each galaxy. The image was captured during 4 nights in April 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 17.3 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC4618_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

This is an image of NGC 4731, a distorted spiral galaxy in the Virgo galaxy cluster. A small companion galaxy, NGC 4731A is shown in the upper right of the frame. Despite appearances, the distorted arms in the larger galaxy are not caused by gravitational interaction with 4731A but with a much larger elliptical galaxy NGC 4679 outside the field of view. The gravitational disturbances have triggered active star formation in the core of 4731 as indicated by the bright red hydrogen alpha spots. NGC 4731 is classified as a Seyfert type galaxy, meaning it has an active nucleus and emits strongly in the infrared, radio, and x-ray parts of the spectrum. The image was captured during 5 nights in April 2024 from SkyPi Remote Observatory using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 17.0 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC4731_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.

I have a QSI 683 WSG. My imaging program is Nebulosity--I've used it for years without any issues. Lately the filter wheel has not been responding to Nebulosity commands, or has been doing so in error. For example, when Nebulosity asks it to go to filter 4, it goes to filter 5 instead. And it won't go to filters 6 or 7 at all. I reinstalled Nebulosity using the open source version, and also reinstalled all the QSI drivers. Still no change. Has anyone had experience with this issue? Thanks.