Ant Nebula MZ3

[tornado33]

Last night I got this unusual looking planetary. Its amazing how bright it is. 5 min subs at ISO 400 ample for it. That area had plenty of good guide stars. Hand guided, pretty much seeing limited. Seeing wasnt too bad for Newcastle area. No filters used.

Astrobin version here
https://www.astrobin.com/0x0g88/?nc=user

[gregbradley]

You got that one well. Hand guided? Wow.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Pretty cool. Never heard about that one but you've got some serious details in its lobes. :thumbsup:

[Geoff45]

Really good to see people tackling the challenging objects. Nice rendition.

[tornado33]

Many thanks. I wonder how hard it is to see visually. Would be fairly faint to the eye as it is mostly red not a lot of O3 in it I think.

[AdamJL]

Wait... HAND guiding?!
Good grief, this should win awards just for that effort alone!

Nice work tornado33.

[Geoff45]

Actually, having done hand guiding many years ago, it is pretty easy. Just requires a bit of patience. Also you have got the whole thing under control and you are not sitting there watching the guide graph do strange things and wondering wtf is going on. That said, it is not something I would go back to.

[tornado33]

Many thanks.
It was far harder when I had the old modded 350d with no.live view and no laptop or guide camera. I had to stand at the off axix eyepiece trying to keep a guide star in an illuminated reticle.
Now I can sit and make myself comfortable as I watch a very highly magnified guide star on the laptop screen. Getting accurate focus with the EOS Ra and 30x live view is so accurate now. Also the low profile EOS compatible off axis guuder means I get coma corrected guide stars that are nice and round.

I look at the incredibly expensive prices of autoguide capable mounts that can carry my heavy 10 inch with its full thickness Sutching mirror where the tube assembly and Sampson mount cost around a 3rd of the cost of an EQ8 or Losmandy G11. So i think I will be hand guiding for a long time to come unless someone makes an engineering breakthrough to be able to make precision mounts at a far cheaper price which i can't see happening.

The odd thing is while mounts are super expensive, Newtonian tube assemblies are much cheaper. $1200 gets you a 10 inch dobsonian for example. In theory just the OTA should be even less.
Cheers. Scott

[rustigsmed]

nice work - this has been on my list for some time now. great work with a dslr too.