IC1805 - The Heart Nebula - NB - Mosaic WIP

[Gina]

At last a clear night sky last night   AND my equipment all worked and kept going until dawn

Esprit 80ED Pro on EQ8 guided with Lodestar X2 on OAG on MN190 and captured with Atik 460EX and Astrodon NB filters.

27 x 5m Ha + 28 x 5m OIII + 28 x 5m SII all unbinned.

Stacked in DSS, aligned with RegiStar and processed in Photoshop.

Taking the info in Wikipedia it seemed the Heart would fit in the frame but it doesn't so until I get my widefield imaging rig ready I'm using the Esprit and making a mosaic.  Here is the first part of the mosaic just roughly processed in HOO "natural" palette.  Resized and saved as PNG for upload here.

Clarity and seeing were both good last night and I was getting FWHM values of well under 2 unbinned.  This is a crop from the larger image showing Melotte 15, without resizing, from a single Ha sub of 5 minutes.

Forecast is good for tonight too so I'm hoping to capture another part of the mosaic.  Not sure if this will cover the rest or whether I'll need 2 more parts.

[oldpink]

good start, nice images

[Fordos Moon]

Beautiful Gina! I soooooo can't wait to have saved up for a 460EX although I fear the Astrodons may be out of my reach!

[Davey-T]

Well done Gina, we were promised "clear skies" here last night but they didn't materialise 

Dave

[Gina]

Thank you everyone   Yes, there have been many times when the forecast for here has predicted clear night skies that didn't materialise   In fact it didn't clear until well after dark last night.

[Gina]

The cloud cleared a bit earlier tonight and it's clear now and image capturing is proceeding   Here is an Ha sub from last night combined with one from tonight to make the complete Heart.  I've got most of it in but a slightly bigger frame would be better I feel.

Guiding is working particularly well tonight so far

[AndyUK]

Very nice indeed, Gina - That'll look stunning in colour if that first pane is any indication ... (Did you manage to get some more frames last night?)

[Gina]

Thank you Andy   Yes, another good night's imaging 31 subs of Ha and OIII and 30 of SII   Slightly better than the previous night.

I'm processing this data now.  Watch this space...

[Phillyo]

That looks awesome Gina! I'm also impressed with your PHD graph! Mine looked like a seismometer that had just registered a 9.4 earth quake! No idea.

Looking forward to the final result

Phil

[Gina]

Thank you Phil

[Davey-T]

Congrat's on two successive nights imaging Gina, had a look around last night but no imaging due to contrail hell

Dave

[Gina]

Thanks Dave

Cloud tonight so image processing rather than image capturing