Running Man NGC1977

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

Hello to everyone,

Well after hitting M42 a few times and before attempting more subs to repair my flame nebula (recommended by Marc) now the moon has gone, I thought I would try a commonly forgotten about beauty that is rarely imaged alone the running man nebula.

This image is mage up of the following using my SCT9.25 and 6.3x reducer

107 x 90 sec Lights
107 x 90 sec Darks
36 x Flats
20 x Bias

I am fairly happy with the image there is some dark nebulosity starting to come out at the bottom of the image but I was hoping for a little more after more then 2 hours of data.
Not sure if spending another night of imaging will bring out much more or if my camera can even catch the extra I am looking for (may need some filters).

Hope you like the image, it was a little cool at 3 this morning.

Carl

[Rex]

Very Nice Carl. Beautiful light wispy nebulosity. I think that dark neb would come out more with longer subs, but what you have already is pretty good for 90 sec subs.

[5ash (Philip)]

Hi Carl ,
Starting to look good , what was you iso setting? Perhaps you could try increasing the exposure time and reducing the iso setting to bring out the reds .
Philip

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

Thanks guys, I usually write my ISO sorry 1600. I struggle with greater than 90 seconds due to the following -

1. Fork mount which is 85% drift aligned, once I manufacture my peer it will be much better.
2. Extremely light effected area.

I am at present doing some finer drift alignment and will try for some 4 minutes exposures.

Philip I always thought 2 minutes and ISO800 was the same as 1 minute at ISO1600. Does reducing ISO and increasing time actually gather more data??

Carl

[Rex]

Hi Carl, I think the advantage of lower ISO but longer subs is a much better SNR, so you get the same data but much less noise, and through processing the noise is much easier to handle. I guess its a balancing act with lots of factors which influence the outcome.