Horsehead & Flame Nebulae

[Fay]

Very windy, scattered clouds, last night, so was amazed I got something. I was hanging on to the cables, as they were moving so much.

This image was takem with WO ZS66, Ha filter, 0.8 Focal Reducer, guided with PHD. 16x 300 secs with SX MX7.

Could do with a bit more processing, but do not want to clip.



Fay

[JohnP]

very nice fay - cu managed to focus ok with new flattener...? need to add some rgb now.. John

[Fay]

I had a nightmare to start with. Starting in the afternoon. I was told that the FR needed to be 55mm from the chip, & I was trying all combinations to get there, as mine was about 4 inches, I am not a metric person.
I rang Ian king's shop, & was advised that I may need to take the front off the SX & put a doubled ended male connection on to connect direct into the filter wheel, as the FR was on the other side.

I happened to have one & put it on, then to my horror I needed to be further out. The connection got stuck on the SX & even with metal grips could not budge it. Suddenly, God looked upon me, & it came off with great ease, don't know how. Put the nose piece back onto the SX, & was in anticipation of it not being correct in which case, I would not have known what to do. Anyway, it is a lot further away from the chip than 55mm, about 4", & after a lot of prayers,is fine.

I wanted to get it before 9pm as heavy cloud was predicted, needless to say it was 100% clear!! Today 98% cloud was predicted all day...........clear all day.
Thinking of doing Mars while it is around, but 100% cloud predicted tonight....but will it be?

Thanks John

Fay

[MarkS]

Nice one Fay.  It's come out very well. 
What scope/camera did you use to do the guiding? 

[Fay]

Webcam on an ED80, with PHD guiding. It was very gusty, so not bad considering.

Thanks Mark

[mickw]

Nice one Fay.
No spikes ?  
You were lucky to see any sky last night, tonight is looking worse.

[Fay]

Thanks Mick, yes it does look like they are right with the weather tonight.

[Carole]

Excellent picture Fay, I have a long long way to go to catch up with you.

Carole

[Fay]

Thanks Carole, there will always be  hurdles to get over though!!

[Tom C]

Nice one! Another great photo Fay

[Fay]

Thanks a lot Tom, we must be giving you a lot of idea's!

[Daniel]

Wow! incredible image, every attempt at capturing the horsehead nebula i've had so far has come up with nothing but stars!

would it be possible to see one of your single 300s exposures before stacking?

[RobertM]

Well done Fay, another excellent image - it's not fun being out in those conditions.

[Fay]

Yes, Daniel, I will sort one out.
Thanks a lot Robert, I did not think I would get anything.

Mick, I am tempted to do a really massive spike!!

[Fay]

Daniel, here is one 300 sec frame

[Mike]

Nice image Fay.

You can see from the raw that the focus was slightly off and that the wind was affecting your guiding, but an excellent image nonetheless.

[Fay]

Thanks a lot, Mike. I did have to discard a couple of images, but not bad considering it was such bad conditions.

[Tony G]

Good going Fay,
A lovely image again, something I'd be well happy with .
Keep up the good imaging and wrap up warm.

Tony G

PS camera batteries reordered, first lot lost in post.

[Fay]

Thanks Tony. No worries about batteries, they will arrive some day!

[MarkS]

Fay,

That single frame looks very good.  Were you imaging from somewhere dark?  Or using light pollution filter?  Or have you subtracted the light pollution from it?

Mark

[Carole]

A good example of the benefits of stacking.  Maybe could be used at a future "talk" on Astro-imaging.

Carole

[Daniel]

Fay, thanks for that, it is indeed a great example of stacking, no more lazy single exposures for me! was it the stacking that got rid of the grainyness, or was that some extra post processing?

Daniel
:O)

[Fay]

Yes I use a light pollution filter. Also I used an Ha filter.
The image becomes clearer when it's stretched & processed, I use Photoshop. Captured with AstroArt.

Going to try Mars tonight. Taking a chance the sky will be reasonable. If it is not, there is not so much equipment to put away, just using the webcam. 

[JohnP]

Fay, thanks for that, it is indeed a great example of stacking, no more lazy single exposures for me! was it the stacking that got rid of the grainyness, or was that some extra post processing?

Daniel - When you stack you increase the signal to Noise ration (SNR) by the square root of the number of images you stack. So if for example you stack 100 frames SNR improves by a factor of 10.

John.