IC 4406 in Narrowband

[codemonkey (Lee)]

aka the retina nebula. Only managed (all 150s) 9x ha, and 5x of OIII and SII due to clouds coming in the past two nights, but I'm probably going to move on to something else now that the moon's rising a little later so I thought I'd share anyway.

It's fairly bright (one source says 10.2) and about 1.8' in length.

Of course last night I was getting the best guiding I've seen, and only managed to capture the measly 5x OIII and SII before the clouds blew in.

Colour blend was fairly arbitrary:

R = SII * 0.8 + HA * 0.2
G = OIII * 0.5 + SII * 0.5
B = HA * 0.8 + OIII * 0.2

[Flugel88 (Michael)]

a nice effort Lee for such a minis-quell target.
Seems to be a bit noisy maybe some more data could clean it up when the blaring bright moon buggers off.

[Atmos (Colin)]

For less than an hour of total integration it's turned out really well! Nicely done Lee.
Out of curiosity, what guiding RMS are you getting?

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by Flugel88

a nice effort Lee for such a minis-quell target.
Seems to be a bit noisy maybe some more data could clean it up when the blaring bright moon buggers off.

Cheers mate. Definitely a bit noisy... probably won't bother doing any more with it though

Originally Posted by Atmos

For less than an hour of total integration it's turned out really well! Nicely done Lee.
Out of curiosity, what guiding RMS are you getting?

Cheers Colin. I saw a total RMS of 0.35" for a while. Looks like for the ~45mins it was operational it ended up being 0.62" overall, but that's with thin cloud affecting it as well.

Best part is that this was facing west, and previously I was getting bad tracking when pointing west. I basically stopped trying to image past the meridian.

Based off that short sample last night, I think the trick is to use longer exposures (3s) and very high aggression (110 - 120) with 0 hysteresis.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

An excellent planetary image Lee

I have considered imaging several hundred planetary nebulae and making an artwork out of them...you know, one of those pictures made of lots of little pictures when closely examined ....or maybe not, probably need 1000's unless duplicates were ok

Mike

[gregbradley]

Very nice Lee. Its really quite bright and you got excellent colour there.

Greg.

[atalas]

I remember having a go at this one years ago with a C11 Lee...tiny bugger needed more focal length and aperture....your a brave man

[Paul Haese]

It's an odd looking object and I like your colouring.

[RickS (Rick)]

Looks great, Lee. Normally an object for long FL scopes you've nailed it with small pixels instead.

Cheers,
Rick.

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

An excellent planetary image Lee

I have considered imaging several hundred planetary nebulae and making an artwork out of them...you know, one of those pictures made of lots of little pictures when closely examined ....or maybe not, probably need 1000's unless duplicates were ok

Mike

Thanks Mike! That sounds like a cool project. Biggest difficulty (for me) would be getting the background the same on all of them hah. I was just looking at my AB gallery and noticed that the background level is wildly variable in my images.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Very nice Lee. Its really quite bright and you got excellent colour there.

Greg.

Thanks Greg!

Originally Posted by atalas

I remember having a go at this one years ago with a C11 Lee...tiny bugger needed more focal length and aperture....your a brave man

Cheers Louie! I wouldn't say brave, I'd say "imaging starved". Been out of the game for a little while waiting on adapters and with the phase/position of the moon I couldn't find anything more achievable that I wanted to photograph so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

It's an odd looking object and I like your colouring.

Thanks Paul

Originally Posted by RickS

Looks great, Lee. Normally an object for long FL scopes you've nailed it with small pixels instead.

Cheers,
Rick.

Thanks Rick :-) As you've no doubt already figured, the image posted was a crop at 100% res. At ~0.9"/px it's pretty damned tiny... I wonder if planetary imaging techniques would work for this, or if it'd be too dim... not something I've ever done. No doubt work better in broadband.