Another project I have been whittling away at for the last month or so is the Helix nebula in bi colour. I chose to use just the two narrow band images based on some advice from Martin Pugh. There is little if any SII data to be had and the noise was very high so in the end I abandoned the SII to data.
I went with the Hubble colour pallette, which mainly focuses on the Ha data over the OIII; although it can be seen within the rings of expelled gas.
If I will try to collect more data if time permits, just to give a better signal to noise ratio.
Paul, I'm very impressed by this image....very detailed and great capture of the fainter nebulosities. I'm curious about your subframe durations and total stack times if you don't mind sharing. Thanks.
Quite like the colour, I tried some 15 minute exposures the other night on the Helix, Didn't gain anything over 8 minute exposures. Still difficult to bring out the outer loop though.
Just shows that a proper CCD with filters is better than an unmoodded DSLR on this object.
Paul, I'm very impressed by this image....very detailed and great capture of the fainter nebulosities. I'm curious about your subframe durations and total stack times if you don't mind sharing. Thanks.
Peter
Peter my sub frame duration is 10 minutes and the total stack is 150 each colour. So five hours of data. On my website the details are listed below the image.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
That looks quite nice Paul, the colours work well.
The outer stuff is pretty faint huh?
Mike
Yes the outer stuff is really faint. On the Ha data I can see the two inner lobes but the lobes outside of that (like in Martin's image) are just not there yet. More time which I don't have now.
Quite like the colour, I tried some 15 minute exposures the other night on the Helix, Didn't gain anything over 8 minute exposures. Still difficult to bring out the outer loop though.
Just shows that a proper CCD with filters is better than an unmoodded DSLR on this object.
Cheers,
Justin.
Justin you will find it tough to get much with a unmodded DSLR. The band passes are too narrow for the filter you have on the camera on its own. There are special filters though that clip into a DSLR will will help.
