IC 2944 Running Chicken Nebula under Sydney skies

[Startrek (Martin)]

Some nice clear nights in Sydney over the past week provided the opportunity to do some imaging. My rig in Sydney has been packed away since the end of November as I spent December, January and early February down the south coast at my Dome.

Chose the Running Chicken as I hadn’t captured this object since 2021.
Imaged over 3 nights with average seeing , no moon and no dew

I was pleasantly surprised on the quality of the data under Sydney’s heavy light pollution ( Bortle 7/8 I’m my area ) I only had to use a final noise reduction of 2 or 3 pixels which is negligible ( I probably could have got away with no noise reduction !!
Plenty of data , dithering and a great cooled camera at lowest read noise did the trick ( I don’t know whether it’s true but folk on CN reckon set your Gain at 101 or say 105 instead of the documented Gain 100 to use the HCG mode as they don’t trust ZWO’s info and charts. Anyway I’ll keep using again 101 as it’s working for me ( Lowest Read Noise at highest dynamic range)

Good old reliable 6” f6 GSO Newt
Skywatcher EQ6-R mount
ZWO2600MC cooled to -10C , Gain 101
TS Optics GPU coma corrector
Antlia ALPT 5nm OSC Dualband filter
150 x 2 minute dithered guided subs ( 5 hours of data )
3 x 40 Flats ( 3 nights )
60 x Bias
PHD2 Multistar guiding ( 0.50 to 0.60 arc sec total )
Mount perform well after being packed away for nearly 3 months.
EQMOD and Stellarium
APT
Stacked in DSS ( multiple night stacking using reference frame)
Processed in Startools V1.8 ( Compose OSC Bi colour )
I haven’t finished processing in colour yet so I’ve posted the image in Synthetic Luminance
Colour to follow later ( OSC Bi colour mapping )
Original native version
Crop version
As usual I used the Spatially Variant PSF Deconvolution in Startools which worked beautifully on slightly binned data. ( No BLur X needed for me )

Comments welcome
Thanks

[TrevorW]

great Chook

[Dave882 (David)]

Great shot Martin- love your tiny stars and great detail revealed. I think with 5nm band passes with the antila you should be able to avoid much of the mess in our Sydney sky but still plenty of challenges nonetheless. Looking forward to the colour version.

That’s interesting what you said about the gain. Maybe I should switch to 101 too…

[Startrek (Martin)]

Originally Posted by TrevorW

great Chook

Thanks Trevor

Now for some colour

[Startrek (Martin)]

Originally Posted by Dave882

Great shot Martin- love your tiny stars and great detail revealed. I think with 5nm band passes with the antila you should be able to avoid much of the mess in our Sydney sky but still plenty of challenges nonetheless. Looking forward to the colour version.

That’s interesting what you said about the gain. Maybe I should switch to 101 too…

Thanks Dave
Yeh stoked about the level of detail for only 5 hours of data out of a OSC under Sydney skies
I have to pinch myself and remember my little el cheapo Newt cost me $299 back in 2017 and although an f6 she’s still a little light bucket
Not too many 6” newt users around , folk generally opt for refractors in the $3K to $8K range in this hobby, amongst other scopes
In regard to the Gain setting , I’m using the Ascom driver ( not native ZWO driver ) there may be a difference but try Gain 101 yourself and compare some data
Cheers
Martin