NGC 2440, Eta carina

[tornado33]

Hi
Heres some shots I took around 3 am the other morning.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=7043&stc=1
NGC 2440, 10 inch F5.6 scope 2 x 5 mins ISO 1600 eos 300D. MPCC and UHCS filter
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=7044&stc=1
Eta carina nebula, 1 x 10 mins, dark removal with IRIS software
[IMG]http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=7045&stc=1
NGC 253, 2 x 10 mins I wanted to see what the UHCS filter does to a galaxy, not good, through it increased the pink colour of hydrogen regions near the core of 253
It was so warm shorts abd T shirt were the order of the morning.
Scott

[tornado33]

I forgot to add the seeing was horrible for the first 2 shots, (Id taken 253 a few hours earlier and seeing wasnt as bad) The guide star was wobbling around as if I was looking at it through water, hence the "soft" focus of the first 2. NGC 2440 in Puppis is a full res. crop.

[h0ughy]

was 1600 iso too grainy for the night at that time Scott? nice dedication and shots

[ving]

see now i would have just thrown in the towel under those conditions :)

nice shots :)

[atalas]

All very nice work Scott !

[seeker372011]

3 am ! now thats dedication!

nice shots.now NGC 2440 is a new one for me so I had to google it to find out more


..from APOD
"The above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo's center. Our Sun will eventually become a "white dwarf butterfly", but not for another 5 billion years"

so that's what our Sun is going to look like in future..luckily plenty of time to read the newspaper and finish a few cups of coffee before that happens

[Orion]

What happened Scott running out of those faint planetary nebulas? Now your starting to take shots of galaxies!

Shame on you. :P

They're nice photos anyway. :)

[Dennis]

Just love the shot of NGC253.

Cheers

Dennis

[RB]

Nice shots Scott, and I second what Dennis said,
"love the shot of NGC253".

:)

[tornado33]

Hehehe thanks all.
Not to worry re faint planetaries, Ive used Star Atlas pro to generate some charts for some more faint obscure ones around the Canis major/Puppis region, trouble is, starting at 2 or 3 am in summer means that only after a few hours this big darn light source called the Sun washes out the sky, even with daylight savings, the summer nights, though comfy to observe under, are just too short. Ive not seen NGC 2440 before, was glad I was able to image it. Star Atlas Pro shows that not far away there are 2 planetaries I can get into the one image.
I set up the scope the night before, then cover it with a wheelie bin liner to keep any dew off, then go to bed, its in the back yard, and the next door neighbour has a dog that will bark loudly at the sign of any disturbance, and the scope is right near my bedroom window, so I get up, take off the cover and Im in business. Tried that today, but it was cloudy at 3 am, so got up, put the scope back in the garage, covered the mount then went back to bed.
[IMG]http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=7063&stc=1
Heres a re processed version of the same NGC 253 shot, done with IRIS. IRIS is definately much better with the dark subtraction, and actually seems to do better with darks that are longer than the actual light images, I can even use darks taken several nights before, however IRIS is not always consistant, for example the NCG 2440 shots were full of hot pixels and residual amp glow, yet the longer NGC253 shots werent,? go figure.
Im tempted on a hot night to try a full 1/2 hour shot at ISO 1600 on something, do the dark, then see how IRIS handles that. I think the secret is that IRIS does the dark subtraction BRFORE the Bayer conversion, IE with full raw monochrome files. Why its not always consistant, who knows. Its also better it seems for me to save the resulting processed images as .BMP but stretch the levels first rather than TIFFS as iRIS seems to have trouble saving files to TIFF without yet more hot pixels

[RB]

NGC 253 just gets better.

:)