First Proper Horsehead Attempt

[britgc]

Hi all,

Had a proper go at the Horsehead Tuesday night after my weekend trials.

There's some pretty horrible horizontal banding starting to happen towards the bottom of the image, so I haven't pushed it as much as it perhaps could have been. But other than I'm pretty happy with it, even manage to flatten the field a bit too.

I'm about to go setup for tonight but I'm trying to figure out if I should spend another hour on it to see how much more it can be improved (particularly the fainter stuff around the horsehead) or if I should give another target a go.

Anyways, image is 120 x 30sec subs @ ISO1600

Cheers,
Bret

[cometcatcher]

Nice one Bret. :thumbsup: Another hour will halve the noise for the same signal. The horse does need a lot of time. The more the merrier.

[britgc]

Cheers Kevin.

Might make it 2 or 3 hours then if I can stay awake haha.

[Flugel88]

Great shot Bret Plenty of detail in there not bad for 30 sec subs.
Nice FOV you managed to get all the good bits in.

[raymo]

Great job Bret; I think it would be good to get at least another hour
before moving on to another target; you have the makings of a fine image there.
raymo

[britgc]

Thanks Michael.
Doing 1 minute subs tonight as the LP doesn't seem quite as bad tonight and the latest synscan update has really helped with tracking quite a bit it seems.



Cheers Raymo.

Hopefully get close to 2 hours done tonight, see what happens.

[multiweb]

Great shot. :thumbsup:

[rustigsmed]

that is very nice, awesome work Bret!

[SimmoW]

Very nice Bret, good depth to the image considering only 30 secs.

[britgc]

Thanks guys!
Got another 2 hours of data last night, 1 minute subs this time though.
This image is all 3 hours combined (1 hour x 30sec & 2 hours x 60sec).
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I definitely want to give it ago at a dark site now.

[Marios]

Really nice color and sharp detail, well done..

Can I ask what sort of flattner / corrector are you using for this scope?

[Nikolas]

That's a great effort

[multiweb]

Superb! Even better. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[britgc]

Thanks Marios.

I haven't got a flattener/corrector as yet, but it's on my to buy list. The image was flattened during processing using Startools and cropped accordingly.
Reduces the field of view a bit but round stars look a lot nicer.



Cheers Nik!



Thanks Marc!

[Camelopardalis]

Wow that's really beautiful Bret :thumbsup:

[SimmoW]

Wow, getting so much more defined. I'm hoping to nab this target tomorrow at Heathcote, but our weather is soooo unpredictable right now.

I imaged it last night in the burbs, but due to 'problems' I only managed 4 by 2 mins, not worth posting. But it was so exciting to see the flame for the first time!

[raymo]

Lovely; main forum material.
raymo

[britgc]

Cheers Dunk :)



Thanks Simon.
It certainly is an awesome feeling spying it for the first time.
Hopefully you get some decent weather soon!



Wow. Thanks Raymo :D

[DavidU]

Bret, wonderful image right there. What's the scope etc?

[britgc]

Thanks Dave.

I use a William Optics FLT98 refractor with a Canon 450d (full spectrum mod) on a HEQ5 Pro mount.

[DavidU]

Well that combo is working well for sure. Keep up the good work.

[britgc]

Thanks again Dave.
Starting to get into the swing of things, largely thanks to the help received from people here on IIS :)

[Jon]

Great effort, Bret. The second lot of data made a big difference.

Go for another three hours' worth? The Horse season is still young ...

[britgc]

Thanks, Jon. Will definitely be getting more data:)
I hope to have a flattener/reducer within the next 4 weeks so looking forward to that as well.

[andyc]

Very nice indeed!

[BruceG]

Wow Bret that is an awesome result you have there!
The colours are superb and the detail is exceptional for the integration time.
You certainly should be happy with the results. Well done and puts my 1.2 hour attempt to shame.
Bruce.

[britgc]

Thanks guys!