Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
Really nice core resolution 
(I always found the seeing better, for the decade I lived in Melbourne, compared to double that time in Emerald city  )
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Thanks Peter, I take it the emerald city is Sydney, not the Wizard of Oz. I'm not so good with pop culture references. Anyway, the seeing here is generally pretty rubbish, occasionally I get a good night, the night this was taken was average, I estimate about 3". Sometimes the plume from my neighbour's heater runs through the area I'm imaging, that's particularly bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rex
Top shot Stuart. I can only dream of taking a shot like this.
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Rex, it's not about dreaming, it's about application and the right gear. Even with modest gear this is an achievable image for most imagers. Work on your skills, patience and practice. I think I have at least three sets of images of the Helix, I'll try to dig the others out so you can see the progression.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marc4darkskies
Looks great Stuart. It's difficult to bring out the fainter extents and I can see you've pushed it hard to reveal them. Nice work.
Marcus
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Yeah Marcus, I had to include some noise for Mike...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
Funnily enough I am working on the same object and have a similar amount of time so far; but I don't have all the extensions. Doing 30 minute subs and wondering how long your subs are with this image? I am thinking of going to 40 minutes to tease out the outer extensions. I am running at f8
As to your image. I really like the detail, and in particular the core sharpness is quite nice. I think you could push your OIII a little to bring that out a bit more though.
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These were 15 minute subs at f/3.6 Paul. You know your system better than me, but I'm thinking you won't gain much from longer subs. I find that my focus isn't stable enough to do much more than 15 minutes subs at the beginning of the evening, so I just stick with that. I have experimented with longer subs but have found that in the end it hasn't made a noticeable difference.
The OIII is strange with this object as there is next to no detail in it anyway, see attached image. There are some striations in the OIII data, but in that part of the nebula the Ha dominates the luminance which is why I stopped acquiring the OIII and concentrated on the Ha. I may add some more to it later.
Between yourself, Peter and my images we'll have a nice set of comparison images between various scope designs and imaging workflows. We should also combine all the data to produce a super mega image!
Cheers
Stu