Ant Nebula

[Nortilus]

Had a go just for fun not realising how small this object actually is. It was a really poor night to do any imaging of any sort and i was mainly out to fix issues.

Photons caught using Meade 8" ACF SCT, Canon 1100D, Guided for 5 mins (windy as all hell so yeah, not great guiding) 5min subs x 3 @ ISO 800.

Maybe I'll tackle this on a much better night and push the subs out to 10mins and get alot more of them.

[LewisM]

Gee it's big... :P

[strongmanmike]

Huuuuge :eyepop:...sniff, anyone smell citronellal..?

[Slawomir]

Hi Josh,

It looks like you had a crack at a difficult object :)

Not sure whether it is due to imperfect guiding, but I feel your optics could require collimation, maybe?

[Nortilus]

I think it was because it was blowing its arse off when i took it and guiding was near impossible. Plus im not sure how to collimate an SCT.

[Regulus]

It's ant sized! :)

[alocky]

This is a very tough object visually in my 25" - I'm seriously impressed you've got anything at all!
Cheers,
Andrew.

[AlexN]

Josh I would definitely look into collimation procedures of sct telescopes. It's incredibly easy and I feel that judging by this image you would benefit greatly.

Also. Good on you for having a crack at a really really difficult target. Once you see its scale in an image you really start to appreciate the resolution provided by the HST.

[cometcatcher]

I wouldn't blame collimation just yet. Like Josh mentioned it was cyclonic out there that night. I couldn't image in it.