Horsehead and Flame Nebula

[AstroTom]

Hi All,

I thought I would post this single sub photo that I took on the weekend of the Horsehead and Flame. We were out at Wyaralong Dam around hours drive south of Brisbane.

The plan was to go out and spend 5-6 hours imaging this with 5 minute subs guided. Unfortunetly what looked like it was going to be a clear night turned into an evening including a thunderstorm and then passing cloud. The result was that I barely had any chance to get any photos. Autoguided was not possible. The one plus thing was that in between the clouds the stars were very clear thanks to the thunderstorm cleaning the sky.

Given that this is asingle shot I thought I would post to show what you can get with a single shot. This image is a single 3 minute sub shot at IS01600, unguided and in RAW only. There is some star trailing on the very faint stars when you zoom in but overall its not a bad photo. I'm going to have a play around and see if I can reduce the over exposure of the main star and the reflection nebula this evening.

The equipment used was a Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120 on an AZEQ6 mount. The camera was a modded Canon 600D.

Anyway I'm happy for people to take this imqage and have a play around themselves to see if they can get any better results.

Regards,

Tom

[GaryA]

Nice shot and enhancement Tom

[Somnium]

great effort for a single sub. i know all about the frustration of clouds rolling in at the worst possible time ! that is astronomy for you.

[skysailor]

Nice effort for a single sub.... well done. It's always good to see just what can be done with a single shot...
cheers

[jenchris]

I was there on Thursday and the same thing happened to me.
The weather was glorious all afternoon and as it got dark, in rolled the cloud.

[tileys]

When you say unguided do you mean that the mount was just tracking and subject to the accuracy of the polar alignment ?

Great shot regardless - love the definition and detail.

Did you mod the 600 yourself ? I modded my 40d and it performs well but I'm wondering about cameras with a newer DIGIC s/w platform and a higher ISO range.

[AstroTom]

Hi All,

Thanks for the comments.

Tileys, yes I mean the photo was taken solely on the tracking of the mount. Normally I would autoguide, but with the passing cloud it was impossible.

JenChris, yea its very frustrating. I barely had any chance to image anything since October. Every time I was free or there was no moon, the skies were cloudy. I really thought Saturday was going to be a good night and so did the rest of the astronomy crew I o out there with. I've been aiming for the Horsehead and flame since last year. At least I got a half decent image.

Anyway I have tweaked the image a little further and evened out the gradient. I think the sky looks a bit more like space now. I also toned down the overexposure on the bright star in Orions belt. Unfortunetly I had to reduce the size of this image too as I could not attach it.

Regards,

Tom