First Lobster from Sydney Skies

[Startrek]

Gave NGC 6357 Lobster Nebula a crack from Bortle 7/8 Sydney skies last night
Ideal conditions last night but not ideal equipment for a very faint emission nebula
Put together a bi colour SHO rendition using Startools

Although I captured 3 hours of data , dithered and calibration included , image was really noisy so had to sacrifice some outer fine detail and resolution to keep the noise at bay
More data needed …..

Anyway happy to snag this target under Sydney’s skies with my equipment , can only improve …..

6” f6 Bintel Newt
EQ6-R pro mount
2600MC OSC cooled to -10C , Gain 100 LRN
Optolong L Extreme filter
TS GPU coma corrector
90 x 2 min dithered guided subs
40 x Flats
50 x Bias
PHD2 Multistar guiding ( 0.60 to 0.65 arc sec error total )
EQMOD, Stellarium and APT
Stacked in DSS
Processed in Startools V1.7

Comments welcome
Thanks

[RyanJones]

Hi Martin,

Out of curiosity, I’ve noticed that even on faint targets and amongst light pollution, you only tend to acquire and process single sessions and a hand full of hours. Is there a reason you don’t combine several sessions and come up with a nice long integration so you can extract that feint detail ?

Cheers

Ryan

[Startrek]

Ryan,
I don’t normally attempt such a dim target, but out of frustration caused by the last 8 months of AP drought, I decided to give it a go. But your perfectly right , dim objects require lots and lots of data especially using a OSC which means multiple nights.
I’ve never exceeded say 6 hours in any of my images over the past 4 years or so , maybe I should start to treat them as a dedicated project and a works in progress, rather than a one night snap and process.
Although in saying that I do challenge myself and my equipment to see what can be achieved out of an image for relatively short integration.
Thanks for your comment
Cheers
Martin

[RyanJones]

Maybe this could be a first time ? Maybe spend a couple more nights capturing some more data and see what you can bring out with 10hrs for example. Even if it takes a few nights, the universe isn’t going anywhere.