A helix I'm happy with

[Garbz (Chris)]

I've had several miserable failures at trying to image the Helix. The closest I got was this nasty one here http://www.flickr.com/photos/10090242@N03/7961830442/ which despite accumulating more than 6 hours worth of exposure showed no Ha response and lots of noise due to an unmodded DSLR and a light polluted sky.

Well 6 hours and 40minutes worth at Astrofest provided the result I was after. Finally a picture I'm happy with.

10min subs on a QHY10 through a Celestron C8 @ f/6.3

[Rod771 (Rod)]

Wow thats nice Chris! Very smooth

Its amazing what dark skies can do for your data.

Well done

[h0ughy (David)]

how nice is that!!!!

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Garbz

Well 6 hours and 40minutes worth at Astrofest provided the result I was after. Finally a picture I'm happy with.

And so you should be, very nice image.


Andrew

[astro_south (Andrew)]

Well done Chris

[johnnyt123 (John)]

Well done Chris.
I love the helix nebula.

Did you drizzle this while processing?
How did you get to such a large resolution?

John.

[PRejto (Peter)]

You should be proud of this one. I like the colours quite a lot. Good work!!

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Great result Chris. Love the colours.

[batema (Mark)]

Beautiful image. Well done.

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice image! Well done, Chris.

[Garbz (Chris)]

Thanks all. Still trying to figure out why some people get a much more orange shot.

Originally Posted by johnnyt123

Well done Chris.
I love the helix nebula.

Did you drizzle this while processing?
How did you get to such a large resolution?

The C8 with f/6.3 reducer makes the Helix fill the frame quite nicely at around 1250mm focal length. The resolution is massive, but the sharpness leaves a bit to be desired, I may have overdone the noise reduction a bit.

[astronobob (Bob)]

Wow, great comparison, A lovely smooth result Chris
Very inspiring, I need a CCD, real quick