Mel15 On IC1805 Heart nebula in HA

Here is a quickie of The Heart nebula or IC1805! Material for mosaic probably but I am waiting on the flattener/reducer before I begin with the big projects 😀
Technical details :

Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro Black Diamond
SBIG 8300M
HEQ5 Pro
Guiding camera: QHY CCD QHY5 mono
Filters: Baader 7nm Ha 2”
Accessories: Starlight Xpress Starlight Xpress FW 5*2”

Resolution: 3352×2532
Dates: Oct. 22, 2014
Locations: Home obs
Frames: 30×900″
Integration: 7.5 hours
Avg. Moon age: 27.71 days
Avg. Moon phase: 3.69%

Darks: ~20
Flats: ~20
Bias: ~100

Mean FWHM: 1.60
Temperature: 11.00

IC1396 Elephant’s Trunk nebula in HA

This is a “quickie” of IC1396 the Elephant’s trunk nebula with minor noise reduction and stretching.

The Elephant’s Trunk nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light-years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant’s Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the west of IC 1396A. (In the Figure above, the massive star is just to the left of the edge of the image.) The entire IC 1396 region is ionized by the massive star, except for dense globules that can protect themselves from the star’s harsh ultraviolet rays.

The Elephant’s Trunk nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.

The combined action of the light from the massive star ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant’s Trunk nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.

Technical details :

Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro Black Diamond
SBIG 8300M
HEQ5 Pro
Guiding camera: QHY CCD QHY5 mono
Filters: Baader 7nm Ha 2”
Accessories: Starlight Xpress Starlight Xpress FW 5*2”
Resolution: 2504×3314

Dates: Oct. 14, 2014
Locations: Home obs
Frames: Baader 7nm Ha 2”: 30×600″ -5C bin 1×1
Integration: 5.0 hours

Darks: ~20
Flats: ~20
Bias: ~100

Avg. Moon age: 20.49 days
Avg. Moon phase: 67.31%
Bortle Dark-Sky Scale: 8.00
Mean FWHM: 1.60
Temperature: 14.00
RA center: 323.617 degrees
DEC center: 57.559 degrees
Pixel scale: 1.856 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: -89.351 degrees
Field radius: 1.071 degrees

Debian/Ubuntu Remote desktop – TightVNC & LXDE

So you want the most (could be wrong 😀 ) lightweight X remote system for your Debian – Ubuntu server.
Read on for Light desktop installation on Debian and remote control with TightVnc.

Installation
Update and upgrade the system
lol@rofl:~# apt-get update
lol@rofl:~# apt-get upgrade

Install X, LXDE  and VNC
lol@rofl:~# apt-get install xorg lxde-core tightvncserver

It will probably install some 200mb worth of packages on your hard drive, but nowadays that’s hardly a problem with Terra sized drives.
So answer yes when asked 🙂

Initialize the tightvnc server to create a new config file
lol@rofl:~# tightvncserver :1

You are then prompted for a new password in order to access your remote desktop.
Repeat your password and and don’t worry when (and if) you see a :
–Warning: password truncated to the length of 8–
VNC like servers truncate the hardcore password you supply it with to the first 8 characters you enter
VNC uses a DES-encrypted challenge-response scheme, where the password is limited by 8 characters!

Answer no when prompted for a view only password, unless you want such an option

Kill the VNC
lol@rofl:~# tightvncserver -kill :1

# Edit config file to start session with LXDE:
lol@rofl:~# vi ~/.vnc/xstartup

# Add this at the bottom of the file:
lxterminal &
/usr/bin/lxsession -s LXDE &

# Restart VNC
lol@rofl:~# tightvncserver :1

Install chromium if you don’t already have it
lol@rofl:~# apt-get install chromium-browser

Your browser is now ready!

Security
Take good note that the following command
lol@rofl:~# tightvncserver :1
Does actually allow the VNC daemon to listen to port 5901.
All traffic is unencrypted, except for the session password, which is a no – no (unless its the laptop on your basement with no outside access.

So in order to run securelly we shall employ the old faithful shh tunnelling

Start the VNC with listening only to localhost connections (eg. from the server inside only)
lol@rofl:~# tightvncserver -localhost :1

On your local machine open a tunnel while forwarding the port 5901 port at the same time
lol@local-rofl:~# ssh -f -N -L 5901:localhost:5901 [email protected]

Now on your local VNC client you invoke the connection to your newly created remote desktop, supply the password and Voilla you are in 😀
[email protected]:5901

NOTES
Have a pick on your system default “apps”
lol@rofl:~# update-alternatives --get-selections

NOT ADVISED
if you want to run root (commando mode) ont he interwebs here is how (at your own risk, you have been warned)

lol@rofl:~# chromium –user-data-dir %U
or update your short cut to include the –user-data-dir %U directive

What if, for some hideous reason you want to use your mobile or some other evil contraption to view your remote desktop.
You can change the the VNC resolution to match that of you device by issuing the following command
lol@rofl:~# vncserver -geometry 800×600

Resources :
LXDE FAQ – http://wiki.lxde.org/en/LXDE:Questions#Change_default_browser
TightNVC FAQ – http://www.tightvnc.com/faq.html#howsecure
How to port forward using PUTTY  – http://www.cs.uu.nl/technical/services/ssh/putty/puttyfw.html

That’s all Folks!

NGC7380 – The Wizard nebula in HA

NGC7380 Wizard nebula in HA
NGC7380 Wizard Nebula in HA

NGC 7380 (also known as the Wizard Nebula) is an open cluster discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787. William Herschel included his sister’s discovery in his catalogue and labelled it H VIII.77. It is also known as 142 in the 1959 Sharpless catalogue (Sh2-142). This reasonably large nebula is located in Cepheus. It is extremely difficult to observe visually, usually requiring very dark skies and an O-III filter.

Technical Details
Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro Black Diamond
SBIG 8300M
HEQ5 Pro
QHY CCD QHY5 mono
Frames: Baader 7nm Ha 2”: 34×1200″ -5C bin 1×1
Starlight Xpress Starlight Xpress FW 5*2″
3003×2166
Dates: Oct. 5, 2014
Locations: Home obs
Integration: 11.3 hours

Darks: ~10
Flats: ~10
Bias: ~100

Avg. Moon age: 10.86 days
Avg. Moon phase: 83.71%
Mean SQM: 17.00
Mean FWHM: 1.50
Temperature: 15.00
RA center: 341.867 degrees
DEC center: 58.074 degrees
Orientation: 179.381 degrees
Field radius: 0.956 degrees

My first CCD attempt is the NGC7380 The wizard nebula in HA (for now) 🙂 It took 4 nights to gather the data, as I am still battling with meridian flips, ADU’s, Dark noise and the rest of the CCD parameters…

Enjoy!