The flower in Orions back pocket with a poxy gull!

[bmitchell82]

Good evening all, well im back from the wilderness with a mixed feelings/results. I have lernt a valuable lesson, if the azimith adjustment post on the tripod legs of said EQ6pro mount seems to be loose... fix it no matter how much of a pain in the arse it is! So this is one evening of imaging..... out of 3.....

All images taken with my 254 astrograph, OAG, QHY9 mono at -25dC and standard qhy filters.

M 78 The Iris nebula
still alot of noise in it but i will work on this target alot more. wind affected a few subs.

Type Total intergration Intergration length

LRGB 75:40:20:20 900:600:600:600

http://brendanmitchell.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/M78-Iris-nebula.jpg

NGC 2035

Ha 90 900

http://brendanmitchell.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NGC-2035-hydrogen-alpha.jpg

NGC 2035

LRGB 90:10:10:10 900:600:600:600

.... dew grrrrrrr = 1x RGB only .... ggrrrrrr

http://brendanmitchell.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NGC-2035-Sea-gull-nebula.jpg


all in all im not really happy with the outcome as i have done far better imaging from my back yard but hey you get that. :) might set up this weekend for a change!

Brendan:thumbsup:

[richardo]

Hey Brenden....
Gol dang that stinken burry Az post.....
Man there's always some thing in this hobby.. got to keep crazy to stay sane I reckon:jump2: .. weeeeee

Some good gets here Brenden..
Your M78 is coming along beautifully.... I love this object! Keep adding to it!
The colour image of the sea Gull area is also looking nice... great to see you be able to get more colour and stuff on it.

Congrats on your Newt! Looks like you have it dialed in very nicely!
They may take some fussin' over, but by hell I love my baby!
Go the fast Newts:2thumbs:

all the best
Rich

[TrevorW]

Nice work Brendan not too shabby IMO

[alistairsam]

nice work brendan,
does ngc 2035 have a conventional name? to me it looks like an old man or an animal with two eyes, a mouth and a beard in 3d. pretty striking.

[Osirisra]

Brendan gave it away in the post title, part of it is the Seagul Nebula, not to be confused with the nothern hemisphere one tho.

[bmitchell82]

Im with you 100% on the newts mate, they really don't even take some fussin, you just have to know what your looking at and thats where it gets "hard". Ide never go to a refractor after having so much mirror real esatate!

As for the colour on this image :P i only have one colour image in each filter of a total intergration time of 30 min :( which is less than what i would normally like in each channel. I probably wont do too much more on this subject because there isn't much nebulosity around the area. LOADS of stars but not much of the stuff i love :)



Thanks trev, i guess for me there are a few little things like the smoothness of the overall image and a due to the wind the stars arn't as nice as i would normally like them. :) Ill wait for some nice weather to come though and just shoot that kinda stuff from the back yard :D



Thanks alistairsam, that overall area has a whole stack of NGC's in it and isn't just one. In the sky6 it is calling it NGC 2035 - The seagull nebula. All in all the nebulosity is pretty well non exsistant in broadband imaging at 10min subs on my newt which means its extremely faint to non existant. In 15 min subs in Ha you start picking up a fair bit more details why this actually is i have yet to get a good answer :P but ill find out some day.

[ReaPerMan]

Nice one Brendan,

Sorry about the weekend not being great :sadeyes: Still you always make the best of it. Speaking from experience your backyard does just fine !

Love the work as always... I'm off this weekend as well must carch up!

all the best

Paul

[midnight]

Despite your tribulations, the outcome is still promising.

Thanks for posting!

Darrin...

[strongmanmike]

Great results really, considering your problems.

I really like the M78 mate, very lovely :thumbsup:

Looks like you are plodding along nicely with the fast Newt now:thumbsup: .

Mike

[bmitchell82]

Thanks Mike, :) its a great feeling that when your Azi post is not flopping like a segull hit by a roage chip all over the place you get 85% keeper subs in wind and a parachute. The OAG is what has really made the newt start singing to the point that Seeing and mirror quality is the limiting factor! :) Who knows what the future holds :D



Thanks Darrin. :) once i get some nice dark skies again I think ill probably put some serious game time on this object likely in the form of 15 min colour possibly 20 min luminance as im enjoying pushing the boundarys of low end buget equipment! :D because some people have to stop and remember that im using a lowly skywatcher 10" dobsonian....... When i purchased it 3 years ago I only paid 580 dollars :)



Should catch up on Saturday or something like that Paul let me know what your upto. Talk to you soon


Brendan:thumbsup:

[Alchemy]

M78 is coming along nicely, just some more time to give it a better density in the outer areas, this is a target I want to image this summer..... If the clouds ever break, which doesn't seem likely in southern Victoria.

Seagull neb.... Interesting Ha data, when I see the full color version the loop section is always blue, go figure??

Good to see someone has had an opportunity to do something, it's very quiet overall in this section of the forum.

[Ross G]

Great photos Brendan.

I really like the M78.

You've got your Newtonian tracking nicely.
Wish I could get mine to work. Round stars last week, oval stars last night...all with exactly the same setup!

Thanks.

Ross.

[bmitchell82]

Its interesting isn't it clive because when i first saw the colour version come though with that greeny blue coloring that was my initial reation that it was a dense pocket of OIII, but the first image that rolled off the press on sunday night in Ha was just that a bright ring who knows to be exact and I don't have the OIII narrow band to check it out either :(



Thanks for that Ross, I love the little blue part to this nebula, as it has that nice little pink touch around the top part. Quite striking really.

Ill keep banging on because not many people actually listen to me when I say this but OAG will solve your issues. its as simple as that mate. it eliminates flexure, it eliminates wind (to a degree) at the end of the day it is just leagues ahead of on axis guiding!

Yes it is harder, Yes you do need a sensitive guide camera but the results are worth it as I went from keeping probably 30% of half cut oval star images to I calculated on sunday with wind and dew killing the last part of the night I kept 85% of my data. But generally when i set up in my back yard I will keep 95-100% of my data. Makes for a better evening!

Brendan

[Stevec35]

They all look pretty good to me Brendan. Just one bit of nit picking. M78 isn't the Iris nebula - that's NGC 7023 in Cepheus.

Cheers

Steve

[bmitchell82]

Thanks steve, I was always under the impression that it was. Is there a alternitive name for it? or just M78

[AdrianF]

Nice photos
Question what's the streak throught the centre of the first photo? Satellite? Meteorite?

Adrian

[bmitchell82]

Sattelite indeed Adrian. I was scratching for data so a pesky trail wasn't going to rule it out. In subsiquent image runs I will remove it from the stack as with big data sets i generally pick the eyes out and leave the data that has great FWHM (somewhere around 2.5-3) and no abberations! :)

I havn't seen you around for a while Adrian, how has things been?

Brendan

[TheDecepticon]

Not too bad, Brendan. Do you focus between filters and check your focusing at regular intervals?

[bmitchell82]

yep generally every hour i will do a focus, and as the qhy filters are par focal and my fingers are only so accurate i don't bother focusing between filters as the newt has a CFZ of 47 micron..... Im not that good :D

I stop going by the hour when the evening temp doesn't vary more than about 2 deg C between the hour interval as everything is pretty much at thermal equilibrium by that stage!

On the nights where i set and forget eg running man, that was 4 hrs of data FWHM went from 3.2 upto 3.9 which is bugger all difference at the end of the day but i did set it at about 00:30 and it stopped at about 04:00. Maximdl also has a sweet little feature that monitors the FWHM of every image that comes in and graphs it for you so you can quickly see if your focus is drifting!

[alistairsam]

Hi Brendan,

which OAG do you use? can you recommend one for a DSLR and an mpcc?
I have an ST80 but am in two minds.
I know the TSOAG9 is very slim but are there any others for newts and dslr's?

[bmitchell82]

if you don't have a good focuser don't get a oag! its just suicide so to speak. Im not completely sure on the oags on the market i cracked the wobbles because they wanted 1300 for a 3" varient which i wasn't and couldn't pay so i built my own see here (http://brendanmitchell.net/?page_id=303) and here (http://brendanmitchell.net/?p=336) and here (http://brendanmitchell.net/?p=359) and the results of it here (http://brendanmitchell.net/?p=365) that last one has a animation for oag and non oag guided and well pretty much explains why! My oag isn't refined like the MMOAG and the like but its very effective!

I have seen the TS 2.5" varient the weekend just gone past and it works. the only other thing you need is a sensitive guide camera or you will pull your hair out what do i mean by that. something in the Loadstar or Sbig 402 catagory its fine when your in a dense star field but if you get into some open space you will struggle to find stars. sometimes i get the sbig into bin 3x3 and even 4x4 territory and thats 36 micron pixels with 90% QE which basically means its really dull and im guiding on a square :D but it works!

Good luck and ask questions if you need more help:thumbsup: