Tarantula in Ha

[JohnH]

The weather was clear for one night with not too much wind so I had to get out and image - despite the 3/4 moon.

I went for Ha on the Tarantula - the clouds cut off the imaging run in the end but I did get 8 useable frames of 240s each. The result is not to good as my aligment was off (again - lazy me) so I have had to push the result quite hard and use a little NR. Alignment, Stacking and calibration was in AA4.

I must say I like the sensitivity of the 145m - knocks my unmodded 20D into a cocked hat.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Very nice John. Very good contrast and focus. Do you have a high -res version posted?

[Octane (Humayun)]

John,

Despite your alignment issues, that is looking beautiful.

I can imagine what it'd look like with 2-3 times the exposure.

Well done.

Regards,
Humayun

[JohnH]

Thanks - no hi-res at the moment - I must get around to setting up my site for astrophotos one day...

Yes it needs mor eexposure - most of the Ha shots I see are 2-3 hrs total, I think the range on this object would warrant multiple exposure lengths to keep the core from burning out. Hope it stays clear tonight - it is very windy here though.

[Ric]

A fine image John, you've captured the nebulosity very nicely. They have great detail and depth.

[atalas]

Looks good John...I'd like to see a higher res.

[JohnH]

OK you asked for it so here it is - with due apologies because as I mentioned I did not really have enough data and have had to push hard (so its a bit noisy) and my alignment was off and now I have had to compress it quite hard as well...still I was happy to get an image at all after all the cloudy nights (which are back now of course).

I hope to get a few more Ha frames and some colour data soon...

Clear Skies!

[atalas]

Still looks good John !

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

That looks quite dramatic John and I like the framing, it's a little different which is always good

Mike