IC434 Horsehead Nebula

[Fay]

I could only take 20x300 secs due to too much wind (in the air) I also had a lot of problems with erratic cable connections.
20x300 secs Ha, WO ZS66, o.8 fr, cls. Atik 314L.

Thanks

[JohnP]

Fay,

I could only take 20x300 secs due to too much wind (in the air)

I had to laugh... it wasn't long ago when you would have been itching to take 3 or 4 images in one session & now your complaining if you can only take 20 X 5min exposures.. I'm glad you added the bit about (in the air) as well... I had visions of you standing at the end of your garden scaring all the foxes away with the noise & smell !!!! 

Now the image - It's not too bad considering the conditions... Looks like you may have clipped the whites a little bit but you've managed to bring out all the nebulosity nicely (especially the curtain wall). Focus looks OK although a few of the stars look a little mishapen (maybe a dodgy stack) or something to do with FR.

Are you planning on adding more to this at another session?

John.

[RobertM]

Hi Fay, that's lovely, it's turned out really well.  One question though - why is the image only 1024 x 767 pixels ?

[Mike]

I am guessing it was cropped to take off bands due to misaligned stacks?

[MarkS]

Fay,

That's a lovely image.  The conditions on Sunday night were not that good, what with the wind and the generally murky atmosphere.  You have managed to capture a lot of detail there.

Stars are looking elongated toward the top left.  It might be worth checking that you have the correct spacing between the FR and the CCD - an incorrect spacing could lead to problems like that.

The horsehead is a challenging target and it will be well worth adding more data to it from a clearer night.

Mark

[RobertM]

Fay,

The Dec guiding I told you about should fix most of the drift and enable you to use more of your image in the final stack.  You now know how to use robo so no excuses there

BTW, the TEC on your camera was reporting -20C to Maxim so the cooling on your camera was definitely working.

Robert

[Fay]

Thanks for all that feedback.
Do you know, I noticed that image size somewhere along the line, & thought it was odd. I had to change it during the course of either getting or processing, not sure which. I did not crop very much, hardly anything.
I thought the image size was automatic for the camera, so did not take too much notice. This looks like a MX7 size image. What do you think could cause that? Very peculiar.   

[RobertM]

I belive you are only getting the parts of the image that overlay each other so after stacking the resulting image is just that.

[JohnP]

Fay - did you use maxim to get these subs or astroart like you normally do? The only reason I ask is that i know when chris got his 314l initially there was some firmware issue & the prog he was using wasn't enabling the cooling even though it said it was...

[Fay]

I used Astroart, John. Yes I remember that. I must check if there is something I should download. Cannot remember if I have done that or not

[Fay]

Ok, I know what the size thing is. Flickr, that is it's large size.

Although I had noticed that while stacking in Astroart, the wrong size was in the stacking information, so I changed it.

[Rocket Pooch]

Fay,

If the patch is not applied your cooling has never been on nice image though.

Chris

[Fay]

Thanks Chris. What is the patch called?

[JohnP]

Fay - I think it is probably this... Looks like you also need to download some software that enables you to update the firmware. Goto this page & scroll down till you get to the 314L. Probably best to double check with Chris though I don't want to be responsible for screwing up your 314L....!!!!  John


http://www.perseu.pt/Atiknew/html/downloads.html