Mars Opposition

South up. Didn't wait till it reaches the meridian at 1am due to the thick clouds.

Equipment: Skywatcher 150/750, ASI120MC, 2x Barlow, EQ3 Pro

Software: AutoStakkert, Registax, PS

Milky way at KKB

A standard portrait of a person shining a flashlight directly into the starry skies is prevalent on social media and by doing so creates unnecessary light pollution to the dark site, thus ruining long exposures image by astrophotographers and pairs of already dark adapted, unaided eyes.

This image was unfortunately taken under such occasion. It really isn't a big deal when I thought that a new picture can be shot in the next few hours of clear skies. But due to the rapidly changing weather in Malaysia, clouds rolled in less than 30 minutes, followed by hours of cloud gazing and waiting...

Equipment: Nikon D5300, 18-55mm kit lens, EQ3 Pro
Settings: 18mm, F3.5, ISO400, 180s + 60s exposure
Software: DeepSkyStacker, PS

Color Moon

The various range of colors displayed in the picture are intentionally amplified during post-processing to clearly show the mineral composition of our Moon. The blue color region, called the Mare Tranquillitatis, is rich in titanium and it is also the landing site of Apollo 11.

Equipment: Skywatcher 150/750, Nikon D5300, EQ3 Pro

Settings: 1/1250s, ISO640

Software: Registax, PS

Saturn

Equipment: Skywatcher 150/750, ASI120MC, 2x Barlow, EQ3 Pro
Software: AutoStakkert, Registax, PS

Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN)

Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) was discovered on April 11, 2020 in images taken by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. This was my first attempt at photographing a comet, it was quite a challenging task for me as the comet wasn't visible in the finder scope under the light polluted skies together with a low altitude position (about 20 degrees). Fortunately, I managed to get 17 minutes total integration time before the skies got too bright. The tail is barely visible in the image.

5 days later. This, I think, will be my last glimpse of the comet.

Equipment: Skywatcher 150/750, Nikon D5300, EQ3 Pro

Settings: 20s exposure, ISO400

Software: DSS, PS

Shooting ISS

 

Manually tracked and got it in 14 images out of 1808. Images in actual sequence are overlayed.

Equipment: Skywatcher 150/750, ASI120MC, 2x Barlow, EQ3 Pro
Settings: 1.5ms
Software: Firecapture, PS

The Sombrero galaxy

Due to its resemblance to a wide brimmed hat, we call it Sombrero Galaxy. It is a popular deep sky object to be photographed under light polluted skies because of its high surface brightness. Notice there is a faint blob on the lower right, PGC 962963 it has a visual magnitude of +16.65 at 1.4 billion light years away from us!

Equipment: Skywatcher 150/750, Nikon D5300, EQ3 Pro

Settings: 450x20s, ISO400

Software: DSS, PS

Great Orion Nebula

Acquired 90 minutes of data before 2019 ends. This target was also taken around the same time last year but with 40 minutes integration time only, giving me a hard time to bring out the fainter nebulosity. This time, with twice amount of data and good sky condition, I hope I didn't push the image too hard.

Equipment: Skywatcher 150/750, Nikon D5300, EQ3 Pro

Settings: 180x30s

Software: DSS, APP, PS