Last week we had 2 consecutive clear moonless nights which is extremely rare in Summer. Captured NGC 3324 Gabriela Mistral Nebula which is located on one of the outer arms of Carina
Location : Sydney , Australia
Skies : Bortle 8 heavy light polluted skies
Conditions : Average to Good Seeing
New Moon
Very light SE wind
No Dew
Backyard semi permanent set up
Telescope : 8" f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon Fibre Newt
Mount : Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro
Imaging Camera : ZWO 2600MM temp -10C , Gain 100
Coma Corrector : TS Optics GPU
Filter Wheel : ZWO 7 x 2"
Filters : Antlia 3nm Ha , Oiii and Sii
Guide Scope : Orion 60mm with helical focuser
Guide Camera : ZWO 120MM
45 x 3min subs Ha
40 x 3 min subs Oiii
44 x 3 min subs Sii
Darks from Library
Bias from Library
Flats for Ha, Oiii , Sii
Tracking and Goto : Eqmod and Stellarium
Aquisition : APT
Guiding : PHD2 ( 0.45 to 0.55 arc sec total rms avg )
Analysed , Calibrated and Stacked in ASTAP
Decided to process in an older version of Startools version 1.7 to see what sort of result I could achieve , I haven’t used 1.7 in 2 years. ( Data Sets loaded into Compose , Color SHO: HST preset with tweaks in all colours )
Produced 2 different SHO versions using the Startools matrix SHO presets
A Synthetic Luminance version which is the base image
And 2 Cropped images for pixel peeping
Total integration 6 hours
I decided to leave the Auto stretch as default and try to include as much nebulosity and detail as possible with the hours I had on this object.
The actual noise floor only required a 2 pixel de noise
Fairly pleased with the result
Framing could have been better , I chopped off a bit of Gabriela’s beehive hairdoo
Astrobin link for full resolution……
https://www.astrobin.com/ttfhzt/
Comments welcome
Thanks for looking
Clear Skies
Martin