Very Smokey Tarantula (Alt/Az - No guiding)

[wayne anderson (Wayne)]

This is an attempt to image NGC 2070 through the smoke haze, the smoke haze was so thick to the south I was suprised to get any reasonable image, after imaging I noticed the corrector lense of the scope was covered in a thin layer of ash or dust which blew off easy with compressed air but the corrector still needed some cleaning, I think I will need to wait for the smoke to clear and try again with more subs to bring out the detail and reduce the noise, I have found that for Alt/Az No guiding imaging around 300 to 500 short 25sec subs usually rounds out the stars and shows the faint details.


Tarantula Nebula NGC 2070

180 x 25sec subs at iso 1600 (only 75mins data) no darks, bias or flats
12" Meade LX200 f6.3 (alt/az setup with No guiding)
Sony Nex-3 DSLR Camera
Processed with DSS,Startools,Gimp

[renormalised (Carl)]

Nice shot and interesting comparison

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Thats pretty good for unguided, but you want to be carefull making direct comparisons like that for a whole lot of reasons, just asking for grief .

[wayne anderson (Wayne)]

Thanks Carl and thanks Fred, point taken and changes made, was just pointing out what images have helped inspire me to put the effort in to produce better images.