This image was captured on the 30th January 2009 at my local “dark sky” site at the Mangrove Mountain Pony Club. I say “dark sky” in quotes because while it’s darker than my home, it’s not exactly what you’d call a nice dark sky site as it’s still only 20 minutes from Gosford and 1 hour from Sydney so light pollution is still prevalent - especially to the South.
It was my first imaging road trip in 3 months - the first since IISAC2008 and the lack of practise certainly showed. I forgot to take my USA plug to Australia plug 240v power adapter, so I had to power my Canon 350D off batteries. It also took me far too long to drift align and it was past 10pm before I started capturing any photons.
Anyway it’s far from my best image, but here it is. Click the link to read more information and to see the 1200px wide version at my gallery.
Thanks guys, in the end i'm happy I got something usable. I was almost tempted to chuck all the data away.
It sure can take a little while to get back into it. And the problem is you usually forget something important and ruin the one chance a month to get good data!
Nice image considering your tribulations Mike. It certainly is big and relatively faint but you have managed the contrast and shading very well. A modded camera would be better suited to this big target but sometimes I think the contrast and shading is better with an unmodded DSLR. The Ha can and does tend to fill the image a bit more than I sometimes like.
Well done.
Not bad Mike, given you are using an unmodded camera. Some Jpeg artifacts present, but looks quite smooth from what I am looking at. An observatory makes for no more setup frustrations. Mind you some guys that come to Clayton house can set up pretty quick and are usually imaging long before I am.
Are you going to get a modded camera, or is this camera going to get modded in the future?
Paul, I'm going to get my 350D modded in the future. That's why I got the 20D so I can keep that for terrestrial and mod the 350D, since I already have all the connections, cables etc to run it for astro.
It's going to be a few months before I can afford it though, but my imaging opportunities are limited by time (and weather) at the moment so i'm not in any great rush.
Nice image Mike, considering the trouble you had with power, late start and the warm night (I know how bad ISO1600 can be in these cameras when the temp is up). I must have a go of this nebula when my 350D returns, as we speak the camera is on its way to Eric for some tender, loving mods
I like how subtle the colour is across the whole field. As you say there is a fair bit of noise present but that only really becomes apparent is the full sized image.
How much smoother were the ISO 800 subs compared to the ISO 1600 subs.
It is also encouraging to see DSO images taken with unmodified cameras, just to get an idea of what is possible, what to expect.
Mike, given how dreadful the seeing was that night at the Pony Club, I concur with others that it is a nicely balanced image with subtle colours.
It is interesting to compare your image to my recent visual observations of The Rosette under dark Coonabarabran skies. The inner nebulosity is not readily apparent visually, even with The Mary Rose, where the ring is most marked is where the nebulosity really begins to become apparent visually. The cluster at the heart is a beautiful region, even without reference to the surrounding nebula, and, like many other targets, often capturing enough detail in the nebulosity comes at the expense of sharp star images for the brighter star components. Visual observers will be rewarded with getting acquainted with NGC 2244!
It is interesting to compare your image to my recent visual observations of The Rosette under dark Coonabarabran skies. The inner nebulosity is not readily apparent visually, even with The Mary Rose, where the ring is most marked is where the nebulosity really begins to become apparent visually.
Hi Rod,
Did you use a filter when trying to observe this target at Coona? I am guessing, not !! You really need a good filter to get the best of this target visually, particularly the inner section of the nebula. Which you can get in a smaller scope than a 20". A good narrowband filter (UHC), or a good OIII filter work almost equally as well on this target. The Astronomik UHC filter does exceptionally well on it.
