I've been collecting some data on the Helix and as I have complained about in the past..BLASTED Newcastle weather!!
Anyway who know's when I'll get more data
so I thought I'd post what I've gathered so far.
No marathon Bassnut effort yet just 60min Lum + 50min Ha . This amount of data is pretty laughable for such a faint object I know but some nice galaxies are showing up all over the place even in such a short exposure. With a QE of just 30% in the Red the KAI11002 chip is not so good at grabing the Ha quickly either
You can see both the full frame and cropped close up versions here:
http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/recent_images
The full frame version shows the nice FOV the ProLine has on the Starfire but the resolution rquired to keep the web image at around 750K (best size for web download patience) prevents the hundreds of galaxies showing up so make sure you click on the close up version which gives an indication of the plethora of background galaxies that actually appear all over the full frame image at higher res. There is a bit of detail appearing in the nebula too I guess but the seeing conditions here are just not favourable for really high res work...did I mention the weather in Newcastle is CRAP..?....
I have a small amount of colour data but haven't posted the LHaRGB as it needs a lot more colour data and the colour data was taken through thin cloud so is pretty crap
(did I mention I hate the Newcastle weather?).
Hopefully I can get several more hours of data over the next few weeks to reveal the outer envelopes of gas that surround the main Helix a bit better..? If not..?..sigh, I will complain about the Newcastle weather again
Cheers
Mike
Geez I need an observatory
...and better Newcastle weather
