Flaming Star Nebula

[MarkS]

Thought I'd try something a bit difficult last night - the Flaming Star IC405.

44x5min Peltier-cooled, Ha modified Canon 350D on Skywatcher ED80 with WO 0.8x focal reducer.
Taken from Sidcup with CLS filter.

Here's a crop of the centre:



Full-size here: http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/flamingstar20122009.jpg
Full-frame (2x2 binned) here: http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/flamingstarfullframe20122009.jpg

There's a lot wrong with it:
1) I could have framed it better
2) There is a problem with the flat causing a bluish background away from the centre
3) There is background banding/curtaining

However I'm quite pleased with it, considering it wasn't taken a from a dark site.

Ambient temperature was 0C and I peltier cooled the CCD to around -6C

[Edit] I've just measured the background sky flux in this image - it's twice as bright as it usually is with the CLS filter - caused by the snow reflecting streetlight upwards, I guess.

Mark

[Daniel]

Hi Mark, Great Image of a suprisingly difficult object to capture, I took some subs of this one myself the other night and had a real time trying to pull it out of the background.

You've answered a question that has been bugging me, Sunday night looked on the satelite images perfect, but I could see far less stars than any other clear night and I picked up all sorts of gradients in my images.

I put it down to high cloud I wasn't seeing on the infrared satelite images, but the reflection of light from the ground seems a lot more probable

Daniel
:O)

[MarkS]

Daniel,

Check the background brightness level in your images from Sunday - I'm sure you'll find that it is much brighter than other equivalent imaging sessions.  In fact, it is illuminating(!) to do after every imaging session.

I've always noticed that clouds, in particular, appear extremely bright on snowy nights - so light pollution in general must also be much higher.

You are right that it becomes much more difficult to resolve faint detail and that background gradients become worse.  I think it will be very difficult to remove the gradients from my image.

Mark

[Rocket Pooch]

Nice image, there is a lot of blue around that area so i'm not sure this is an issue.

Would love to get a cooled CCD onto Daniels bucket in a dark site

[JohnP]

Looks pretty darned good to me Mark. I was out myself that night as well & struggling to get anything decent - got better later on but too cold....