My name is Peter Nerbun. I'm an astrophotographer who lives in
Perry Hall, Maryland in the USA.
Here are the astrophotos I captured with my C11 Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) and ATIK 460EX astronomy camera. Please click on any one of the images to see a description of how and when I captured that particular image. After you've read the description please click on the green oval icon at the top left corner of this page, this will take you back to the page showing all of my astrophoto images.
This is my image of the Eagle Nebula, Messier 16, which I captured on Sept 5 2018 and earlier using my C-11 SCT and ATIK460EX camera. I captured M16 using a 3nm H-alpha filter, a 3nm O-III filter and a Luminance filter on the following dates; please note the exposure times for each filter and the number of frames per filter on the dates specified:
H-alpha: Jul 31 & Aug 9 2017 13x10mins = 130mins
Aug 22 2017 8x15mins = 200mins
Sep 4 2018 3x10mins = 30mins
Sep 5 2018 8x15mins = 200 mins
(Total HA = 560mins)
O-III: Aug 1, 8 & 15 2017 20x10mins = 200mins
Luminance: Aug 13-14 2017 24x6mins = 144mins
Total Integration Time = 904mins = 15 hours
I captured but did not use 90 minutes of Red filter data.
I used a star mask in Pixinsight to eliminate some of the stars because they were bloated due to the exposure times; that's why some the stars directly over the Pillars region of M16 and elsewhere aren't present in my image.
In addition to the C-11 SCT and ATIK460EX main imaging camera, I used a Lodestar X2 guide camera, an On Axis Guider (ONAG), an F/6.3 Reducer, and a Starlight Instruments motorized programmable focuser control system, all components supported on a Losmandy
G-11 mount controlled by a Gemini 2 mount controller.