Face fleeing flame

[Peter.M]

Hi guys after my last images having horrible guiding I went out last night with determination to capture something with perfect guiding. The moon is still being pesky so Hydrogen alpha Nitrogen emmission included(I Had to say as a ICP Chemist :P) was the go. I got my mount aligned with alignmaster, and selected my target NGC 3324 part of the carina complex.

My first impressions of the guiding graph were good. The autoguiders image scale through my OAG is 1.34 arc seconds per pixel, and the graph was not leaving the 1 pixel wide lines.

I named the image Face fleeing flame as the semi-circular nebulosity is supposed to look like the silhouette of a face, and the left side of the frame is almost like a bushfire flame.

My image scale is 1.39 arc seconds per pixel and this is 12 15 minute exposures at -25 degrees. I still have some issues with coma in the corners which looks worse than usual in this image I suspect due to the cluster in the top right drawing your eyes to the problem more than usual. This is something that I am still working on.

Thanks for looking.

[TheDecepticon]

Nice shot.:thumbsup:

Commonly known as the Gabriela Mistral Nebula, as it is said to resemble her side on profile. Examples of the resemblance can be found online.:)

[LightningNZ]

I think it looks like Lord Voldemort from the first movie... but nice pic!

Cheers,
Cam

[Peter.M]

Using the best subs only i get this, with a little high pass itterations done to it, I think I like this better.

[multiweb]

Really well processed Peter. That's Gabriela Mistral alright. :thumbsup:

[Ross G]

A very good photo Peter.

You have captured some great detail.


Ross.

[Peter.M]

Thanks Ross, Im pretty happy with this one too. If I can chase down the abberation and fix it I should be all set!




Im glad you can see the maidens face. She sure has one hell of a nose!

[strongmanmike]

That's quite good Peter, and as Marc says, nicely processed too :thumbsup:

Face Fleeing Flame, he he , how about Poets Protuberance Palliates Pyrotechnics :P

After hammering the Keyhole, Gabriela is on my (longish) possibles list...good seeing would help though :rolleyes:

Mike

[Peter.M]

Thanks Mike. This image was taken in the usual horrible seeing around my place shooting from my front porch over the house. I would love to take my rig to somewhere dark and there are numerous places around that are suitable, the hardest part is getting the power that my setup is reliant on now.

I also need to sort out the collimation or spacing of my corrector. I know the collimation is out slightly but I cant seem to stack the last little bit. Using autocollimators offset pupil I can get 2 perfect circles by stacking the inverted reflections, but then the central pupil has some offset reflections. Interestingly I have got the same result after taking it all appart and putting it all back together including my new focuser and secondary.

The other thing that is hampering my efforts at the moment is the fact that my setup is taken down every night. When I plug my camera in to the laptop I lose ascom for some reason, so at the moment im doing my alignment stuff, syncing some stars and going to where I want to image and then putting the camera in.

From here I cannot control the mount automatically anymore, this means framing is whatever it is or I can try to do it manually which isnt fun. It also means that imaging over more than one night is almost impossible. Bring on the pier I say! If only I wasnt in a rental property currently.

Anyways I will stop ranting, and thanks for the kind words everyone!