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Vela SNR: a small gap in the smoke and dust
Hi all,
Being in Canberra I have been having withdrawals because it seems like there has been two months of smoke and/or dust storms obscuring the sky. It's been weeks since I've seen stars but for several hours last night the smoke and dust cleared. Even though the seeing wasn't good I couldn't pass up the opportunity. This is a nine panel proof of concept and first attempt at a mosaic. The subject is the Vela supernova remnant (aka Vela XYZ or Gum 16). This is 4x300s of Ha per panel using A Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED with ASI1600mm and Astronomik 6nm Ha filter. There's not a lot of data and I didn't use calibration frames because I was just testing the acquisition and processing, and yes, some stars are pinched. The image FOV is approx 4.5x3.3 degrees.
I've just today received a Starizona Apex ED 0.65x flattener/reducer which I'll use for the full project. This will convert the Esprit from f/5.5 with 550mm focal length to f/3.575 with 357.5mm focal length, so hopefully fewer panels and better SNR than the native Esprit. Now all I need is for the smoke and dust to clear for many, many nights to get the data I need...
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