The Cocoon Nebula DSLR

[halli]

Hi All

Please see attached crack at the Cocoon nebula.

 I am experimenting with my dither settings ie increasing them to improve noise reduction with the  DSLR but it is disturbing to see the PHD graph shooting off the scale especially in DEC and hoping it all comes back to normal before the next image starts ! I think it is helping though.

The image is cropped as it is not large in a 130pds !

I have recently bought a GSO RC8 so look forward to redoing it at longer focal length - just getting the guiding set up on it before I use it in anger.

Hope you like it !

Best Wishes

Ian

[xtreemchaos]

nice image mate,well framed with good detail. thanks for sharing.  charl.

[toxic]

thats a nice cocoon 

[halli]

Thanks for your comments Charl and Chris

[toxic]

this object looks great when left as a wide-field image as well.

[ollypenrice]

With a DSLR Tony Hallas recommends a big dither - around 12 pixels, and I'm convinced he's right. Anyway this is good, particularly in red. There is blue signal as well - a nice little reflection nebula next door, if you can find it.

Olly

[halli]

Thanks for your comments Olly.  

I have found that increasing the dither settings have certainly improved matters, however there appears to be the risk of  DEC instability if the settings are too high so it needs some compromise between large settings but ensuring there is no introduction of   instability.     I am still experimenting to find the correct value and am now introducing larger dither in RA only to help the stability issue.   

I probably cropped the image too much and this  has revealed a little too much small scale noise in the background.

I dont seem to have captured much of the blue signal - used a UHC filter so perhaps that has something to do with it ! or perhaps it was lost in the processing.  I  might well have another go at the processing at some stage.

Cheers

Ian

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Thanks for posting.

[halli]

Thanks Laudropb