NGC7000 - Almost fell off my chair!

[Christopher Davenport]

Hello,

I have been working on uplifting my game with Nebula recently, and my target has been the western Veil.

To this end I have gathered a couple of hours of data and processing it to the point that I have caused frustration in my household!

So last night after setting up my kit, I thought, before the bad weather return, lets get some data from another target, just in case the Viel is in vain.

Using Stellarium, I was trawling objects that would be visible and in my limited patch of the sky, focusing mainly on Cassiopeia.

All the objects in there are to small for my 80ED at F4.5, I needed something bigger like the Veil.

Hunting around in Cygnus, I quiet literately stumbled onto the North America Nebula. 

Now I know that this nebula malarkey is near impossible without a modified camera and I thought that this would probably be a waste of time.

But how else does one learn without taking chances on stuff like this, plus it is a perfect size for my reduced focal length (320mm)

I aligned my set-up to Deneb and did some centring on the star to sync EQMOD to Deneb and to use drift to make sure that my polar alignment was good and that my guiding would be good with east heavy weights.

Next I used APT to slew to NGC7000 and I took a test image to frame. At this point the disappointment set in.

I could not see anything in the image even after multiple test shots increasing the ISO and increasing the time.

Until all the image was washed out with light pollution.

This must be some kind of misalignment that has happened, so I fired up Astro Tortilla.

This is software that analyses your image and your co-ordinates and issues correcting commands to align your telescope.

After phaffing with it a bit, because It does not always find a solution, so need to slew about to get it to work.

Back onto NGC7000, Astro tortilla'ed to within 0.1', this must be deadly accurate now.

Again, run through the test shots and just get washed out images with no sign of anything.

So I thought I would take a proper test shot at ISO800 for 3min.

This was not inspiring me at all and the realisation kicked in that I am going to have to modd my baby soon.

How frustrating after two hours of setting up aligning and trying to track this thing down, there is nothing there!

I was faced two options, pack up or pretend that there is something and go through the motions.

Well I had pushed it this far and it was getting late on a school night, still to pack up the telescope.

If I am going to leave it outside it might as well image and at worst I will have a nice wide-field of some arbitrary stars.

I setup PHD and got my guiding going and set APT to image for 90min at 3min subs and EQMOD to park the mount in 100min.

Off to bed and forget the whole darn thing, at least I got some practice in on my guiding as the east heavy was working quiet well.

So I woke up this morning and pushed all the subs through DSS and then aligned the colours and stretched.

WOW, out popped this beauty! I almost fell off my chair!  

What a great feeling, it was almost as good as the very first time. 

I ran out and showed my wife with a massive grin on my face. 

This image is 90min at 3min subs, stacked, aligned and cropped in DSS.

With colour, midtones, contrast and noise in Image analyser.

Edit: I know this could be pushed further, so any comments welcome. 

(And other spelling mistakes)

[peroni]

Nice job! I was sat outside a month ago imaging M101 and was pretty sure I could just about see that with the naked eye (traces of the wall). Very faint, was I imagining it? Not sure but it certainly is a beauty once you go through the pain of data gathering and stretching.

Another to add to my target list.

[Leveye]

Feels great don't it? I remember editing the Witch's broom for the first time and thought there was nothing there. Then a little tweeking and Hello! Congrats on an amazing image.

[wxsatuser]

Think what you will get when modded.

One I did in early July........60Da and EF 200mm L @ f5.6....12x300secs......not finished processing or adding data.

I gathered a few more subs for it last night but clouds stopped play

[Christopher Davenport]

Nice one,  Mike!

I take it you are piggie backing on your mount, with the 200mm lens and  adding the spikes onto the stars in post processing?

[wxsatuser]

No piggy back.

Camera and lens are bolted to a dovetail one end, on other end is my Orion mini guider,

The spikes are caused by the 8 bladed diaphragm.

I'm looking to get another camera and have a twin shooter as I now have 2x EF 200mm lenses.

I have all the gear just need another cam.

[Christopher Davenport]

No piggy back.

Camera and lens are bolted to a dovetail one end, on other end is my Orion mini guider,

The spikes are caused by the 8 bladed diaphragm.

I'm looking to get another camera and have a twin shooter as I now have 2x EF 200mm lenses.

I have all the gear just need another cam.

Why two camera's, is it just for faster data capture or bigger wide field (stitched)?

[simmo39]

So cool!

[wxsatuser]

Faster capture mainly.

If the last year is anything to go by, imaging time has been a bit limited.

So me thinks try and capture twice the data when conditions allow.

The most I have managed here has been just about an hour.

Last night looked reasonable but about an hour in and clouds plus contrails come scudding in

and the guiding went to pot.

[glowingturnip]

very nicely done !

I had the same when I did my rosette neb pic - couldn't see anything at all in the eyepiece or in the test shots, but did manage to match the open cluster pattern to star charts, so just went for it anyway - on post-processing afterwards, out it pops !

[LukeSkywatcher]

How frustrating after two hours of setting up aligning and trying to track this thing down, there is nothing there!

I disagree. The "Gulf Of Mexico" is pretty obvious in the first image. The whole nebula is obvious, but the Gulf region really is standing out.

[Christopher Davenport]

How frustrating after two hours of setting up aligning and trying to track this thing down, there is nothing there!

I disagree. The "Gulf Of Mexico" is pretty obvious in the first image. The whole nebula is obvious, but the Gulf region really is standing out.

Sure, now that I look at it and know what it looks like I can see something there, but last night I felt pretty disillusioned. 

I guess once you get used to imaging nebula, your eye gets far more trained to these things.

I am used to imaging things that on a short sub (10sec), it is possible to see it and frame it. 

This is 180s and it is barely visible, unless you know what you are looking for!

[MartinB]

I love that first image, it's like an enhanced view you would get from a low power scope at a very dark site.

Well done with putting all the data gathering elements together, great perseverance which is what astroimaging is all about.  You can be very, very happy with that image.  You will take better in the future but they wont give you any more pleasure than this one.

[Christopher Davenport]

I love that first image, it's like an enhanced view you would get from a low power scope at a very dark site.

Well done with putting all the data gathering elements together, great perseverance which is what astroimaging is all about. You can be very, very happy with that image. You will take better in the future but they wont give you any more pleasure than this one.

Thanks Martin, means a lot to me.

[Luke]

Cor, that's a beauty, Christopher! Just lovely

I can't advise how to push it as I am more into video camera imaging, but I love that pic, don't change it is my vote

[purdo]

Both of them - lovely images.

[tingting44]

very nice! its amazing what a bit of stacking can do

[Christopher Davenport]

very nice! its amazing what a bit of stacking can do

Yes, its stacking and stretching.  What amazes me is that I only used DSS and Image analyser on this, which are both free downloads.

(I left PS5 out of my workflow because I was in a hurry to see what was in the image.)

[Christopher Davenport]

So I decided to reprocess this data as I feel I was overly aggressive in the cropping and stretching of the data, as usual I was very excited to post the result.

In this version I have used a lens correction feature to straighten the left side of the image as it had some severe distortions happening.

This has allowed me to rescue the wide format of the original.

I hope you all like what I have managed to achieve.

I will wait till I have modified my EOS, before I gather more data on this one.

[Key]

Suddenly, out of the gloom...

Fantastic images.

Gives me hope. So far my photo's have been limited to a few seconds without proper tracking with absolutely nothing hiding in the shadows, but I'm hoping with my new mount and scope I'll start to get better images now. A long way to go though!!!

[Christopher Davenport]

Suddenly, out of the gloom...

Fantastic images.

Gives me hope. So far my photo's have been limited to a few seconds without proper tracking with absolutely nothing hiding in the shadows, but I'm hoping with my new mount and scope I'll start to get better images now. A long way to go though!!!

Thanks mate, it does take time and practice to get images, this sport does not suffer fools gladly!

Give yourself some time and start on easy stuff, so that get you some early wins to spur yourself on.  (M13, M31, M42, etc)

With the ED80 and HEQ5, you will be able to get some good images of Messier objects, even without guiding.

I have easily achieved 120s without guiding with good polar alignment.

The most important step that I learn't was to get good polar alignment, through the drift align technique.

It takes a bit of time, but every time I skip it I get poor images, so now it is just embedded in my workflow.

Keep pushing and you will get there. 

[Astrosurf]

Excellent job! You've captured the star colours nicely too. It's amazing when the detail just keep emerging. I prefer your second image as it's softer.

Onward and upward!

Alexxx