Our first astrophoto in almost a year after the huge rebuild and rewrite.
Big one here
Heavy cloud coming in fast, so just 3 x 10 min unbinned subs in H-alpha. We would normally hope for ten times that, so this a tiny bit gritty for us.
The new FLI PL16803 seems magnificent. No more "smudge to the right", and no more ghosting from the previous shot, that we used to get with the old Aspen 16803.
We've kind of forgotten how to do this. It was pretty terrifying. Very rusty on the processing. If we've made any mistakes with the processing, it's probably making the background too black to make up for the very short exposure, and perhaps slightly oversharpening because everyone else has been submitting such razor sharp stuff of late. We hope to be back to our old rhythm soon.
We've turned the swan through 90 degrees. In this pose, you can see that it is yet another phoenix, or firebird, arising from the flames, although it is easy to accidentally think it is one of those spatchcocks you get from Harris Farm.
The "cygnet", a little accompanying nebula of extreme faintness, is mostly out of frame but you can see part of it to top left. If you look very closely you'll see an adorable little fluffy head, with a pair of eyes and a cute beak, looking straight at you. If you instead see a kitten, that is understandable, but it's not, it's a cygnet.
Best,
Mike and Trish
