I finally got a few more hours on the Helix. I kept taking 900 second subs each time I got a clear night. Some nights had very bad seeing, lots of humidity and orange sky-glow from the suburbs.
I had 54 subs to choose the best from and got a cumulative exposure of 5 hours as a result. The rest were rejects.
One of the big problems I have been having is my focus shifting when the telescope becomes vertical. I may have to come up with a solid backstop to attach to the tube, hook around behind the camera and have an incremental screw to fine tune the focus for zero shift as the aspect of the telescope heads for the zenith. More on that on my DIY pages when I get the site fixed up.
So here it is. I think I will leave this alone as I have been itching to try other targets.
so many things to fight against to collect the data, still youve made it, hope you work out the focus issue.
mine shifts due to temperature so i have to make sure it is exposed to cool down about an hour before i use it, even in a well ventilated observatory its sensitive, the tube temp drops from 13 deg down to 3 ish in that hour....
Very nicely resolved image Baz. I do notice you have clipped the black point and lost a lot of data. The outer ring has almost gone. Perhaps a repro might be able to pick up some of this lost data. You have managed a lot of detail in the core area but lost a lot outside.
Hope one day I can tackle this one myself.
