Ray Gralak's Hydrogen Alpha Filtered CCD Images

Ray Gralak's Hydrogen Alpha Filtered CCD Images

This page contains links to many of my H-Alpha filtered single frame and mosaic images. For the mosaics the given exposure time is the duration of each frame of the mosaic. Virtually all of these images were taken from my light-polluted backyard in San Jose, California (Silicon Valley). The mosaics were done with my AstroPhysics Traveler (105mm/f6) with the AP 0.75x focal reducer mounted on my AP 1200 GTO mount (click here to see my equipment page). I use Software Bisque's Orchestrate, TheSky, and CCDSoft applications for image acquisition and MIRA AP 6, MaximDL v2, Photoshop 6, and Registar 1.0 for processing. All of the mosaic images were composed of unguided 3-10 minute exposures.

To take these images I used my SBIG ST-8E CCD camera. I always get questions on the type of H-Alpha filter I use. It is a Custom Scientific Research Grade 3nm band-pass filter with anti-reflection (AR) coatings. You can get this filter directly from Custom Scientific (http://www.customscientific.com) or from Santa Barbara Instruments Group (http://www.sbig.com). Also Anacortes (http://www.buytelescopes.com) sometimes has them in stock.

In addition to this page please take a look at my collection of full-spectrum monochrome and color LRGB images. You can find them here:

Ray Gralak's CCD Images

Image links are reverse dated. The newest links are first...

WARNING: Many of these images are large and may take a while to download! I've sometimes included images that have been reduced in size. These will download faster and fit better on lower resolution screens.

2001/06/14 M8/M20 Region - 110 mins Luminance 1x1 binned - [158KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST10E -AP1200)

2001/06/14 M8/M20 Region (Reduced) - 110 mins Luminance 1x1 binned - [96KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST10E -AP1200)

2001/06/08 IC1396 - LRGB Mosaic (6 frames - 50 mins Luminance each 2x2 binned, 30 mins RGB 3x3 binned) - [319KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST10E -AP1200)

2001/06/08 IC1396 - LRGB Reduced Mosaic (6 frames - 50 mins Luminance each 2x2 binned, 30 mins RGB 3x3 binned) - [144KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST10E -AP1200)

2000/5/6 Gamma Cygnus LRGB (Color courtesy of Chris Schur) Mosaic (23-images) Full Size (10 minutes 3x3 each) - [246KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST8E -AP1200)

2001/01/21 NGC 281 - LRGB (130 mins Luminance, 30 mins RGB) - [226KB ] (San Jose- AP155 f/7, ST8E -AP1200)

2000/01/21 NGC 281 (Reduced to 65% size) - LRGB (130 mins Luminance, 30 mins RGB) - [104KB ] (San Jose- AP155 f/7, ST8E -AP1200)

2001/01/13 M42 LRGB (6 hours Ha, 1 hour each RGB) - [189KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST8E -AP1200)

2000/12/23 NGC 281 - LRGB (120 mins Luminance, 30 mins RGB) - [116KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST8E -AP1200)

2000/12/23 Cederblad 214 and NGC 7822 - Monochrome 4-Frame Mosaic (21 mins 2x2 binned) - [143KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST8E -AP1200)

2000/12/23 New California Nebula Monochrome 8-Frame Mosaic (21 mins 2x2 binned) - [199KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST8E -AP1200)

2000/12/23 M42 Monochrome (6 hours) Reduced - [87KB ] (San Jose- AP105 f/4.5, ST8E -AP1200)