Pelican Nebulae IC 5070; LBN 350 12 and 22 July 2015, Manche, France

[The Thing]

Image date, time and location:   2015-07-12 & 22 00:00-02:00
Telescope aperture and focal ratio:   Meade LX90 8" UHTC, Baader Alan Gee II Telecompressor, HEQ5 belt modded & new bearings
Camera and filters used:           1000D Modded, IDAS LPS-D1 clip filter
Processing applied:                   DeepSkyStacker, StarTools, CS2

Only 2 hours of data (300s @ISO800). I'm using the LPS-D1 filter as the local street lights (only 5 of them but bright) are on until 01:00 and night is currently 00:00-02:00ish. What would be handy is a filter wheel so as soon as the lights go out I can take out the filter.

[Carole]

That's great Duncan. 
Just needs a bit of a colour balance as the red is out of line with the Blue and green, otherwise really nice.

The filterwheel sounds like a good idea.

Carole
 

[Fay]

well done Duncan, nice to know you and Carole have started the season off early, will spur us on!

Fay

[RobertM]

Nice one Duncan, as you say it needs a bit more exposure but the filter seems to be working well.

BTW, what's that faint bar down the right hand edge ?

Robert

[The Thing]

Aha. the faint bar. It's actually more like a picture frame when the image is stretched. I'm redoing the stack in IRIS to see if that gets rid of it. I did wonder if it was a DSLR artifact e.g. mirror box shadow as I have seen it before and my setup hasn't changed.

[Kenny]

Wow, that's brilliant. Well done Duncan.

[MarkS]

A nice job there Duncan.  The IDAS D1 is a very good filter.  I do wonder if it actually helps you given your fairly dark sky.  Are the street lights that bad - can you quantify the difference they make in background sky levels?

Surely 2am is roughly the middle of the night in French time so your imaging could be from 1:00-3:00am or 12:30-3:30am?

Mark

[The Thing]

A nice job there Duncan.  The IDAS D1 is a very good filter.  I do wonder if it actually helps you given your fairly dark sky.  Are the street lights that bad - can you quantify the difference they make in background sky levels?

Surely 2am is roughly the middle of the night in French time so your imaging could be from 1:00-3:00am or 12:30-3:30am?

Mark

The filter does make a difference but not a great deal, it depends on the transaprency near ground level. I will try leaving it off next time.

Astronomical Darkness is tonight 00:38-03:51 CEST. Makes for a long night. The last couple of nights it's clouded over at 02:00ish... We are just going out for al fresco moules frites and a grand barbecue with music and fireworks up at Gouville-sur-Mer (20 min walk) and I'll see what the clouds are doing when we get back - it's looking hopeful.