Sh2-142 "The Wizard" and NGC 7380 in Ha

[Paramount]

Hello fellow insomniacs
After an hour of cloud cover after aligning and focusing and ruining the first 5 subframes I let the camera run as there was no sign of rain and true to form with the British weather the skies cleared. I managed to get 18x10 subframes of the The Wizard in Cepheus, details are as follows
TMB 115 f7 with field flattener
Starlight Xpress SXVF H36 with FLI filter wheel using Astronomik 13nm Ha filter
Paramount ME
18 x 10 minutes unguided
Simple autodark subtraction in Maxim DL, no flats or bias frames
Aligned and combined in Maxim DL using sum
Saved to 16 bit tiff, using full pixel value and gamma value of 0.8 to stretch
2 x aggressive curves and 1 minor curves alternated with levels in Photoshop CS2
Local contrast enhancement using Noel's tools in Photoshop CS2
Clone stamp tool to tidy image
Final minor cropping to remove effects of stacking
I have also included a rotated cropped closeup of the Wizard to show the detail better.
I had to reduce the quality of the image somewhat in order to post it, better quality versions are on my site http://www.imagingtheheavens.co.uk
Thanks for looking
Best wishes
Gordon

http://www.imagingtheheavens.co.uk/U...rdnebulaHa.jpg

http://www.imagingtheheavens.co.uk/U...bulaHacrop.jpg

[alan meehan (Alan)]

yes that does look like a wizard , lovely shot gordon well done

[Bassnut (Fred)]

10mins unguided?, thats very good ;-). A tad widefield for the object and the pic res, but look forward to RGB addition. 20-30 guided minutes guided wouldve been deeper. Youve spend megasponulies on a PME, why unguided?

[Paramount]

Hi Fred
Thanks for the comments, I haven't started autoguiding yet for a few reasons
1. I haven't got a suitable guide scope yet, any scope with a moveable mirror such as SCTs doesn't really make for a good mixture in an autoguiding setup because of the risk of miror flop ie if you use the SCT to guide and you get a slight bit of mirror movement then the guide star could move a fraction off line and the autoguider camera will cause the mount to follow it even though the imaging scope was ok, I have seen guided images through an SCT that looked far worse than unguided. I am getting another short focus refractor later in the year which will enable me to guide properly and hopefully next year I am going to sell my SCT and get an Astrosib RC 10" which doesn't have the problem of mirror flop
2. British weather, in particular where I live (surrounded by mountains and hills on all sides means that our weather is so unpredictable that even 30 minute guided subs would be a risk which is why I am sticking with 10 minutes at the moment
3. As I work permanent night duty I get very little time to spend imaging so often I just like to get everything set up quickly and make the most of what little time I have
Rest assured I will be trying for longer subs and guiding at a later date
Best wishes
Gordon

[Ric]

A lovely image Gordon, the Ha filter really brings it up nicely.