NGC 1333

NGC 1333. Date of image 24/11/2016.

Hardware details: Camera: Canon 600D (astro modded). Telescope: SW Evostar 120 with Baader UHC-S filter. Mount: AZ-EQ6 guided using a ST80 synguider. Image details: Lights: 28 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min at ISO 800 (taken during cloud cover), Lights and darks separated by 15 sec intervals. Flats: 50 x 1/350s (taken from laptop monitor screen) at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 800. 

Image was precessed in DSS. Colours have been stretched and saturation is 30%. This is also 2x drizzled.

The weather was poor that night. Clouds kept interfering with guiding and I got just over 1h of imaging. Despite a clear weather forecast! There was also a noticeable amount of wind that was affecting the tracking. I also forgot to lock the RA and DEC clutches which couldn't have helped matters. Overall I had a very frustrating time.

Comments:

My first attempt at this nebula. I was actually planning on going back to the IC 443 which rises later but clouds prevented that. As before I was able to capture about 35 darks at ambient temperature (about 4-6 degrees) which will come in useful later. The target was much fainter than I was expecting and the dark nebula around it will need a lot of frames to show detail. Given the current weather, I doubt I will be able to achieve an excellent picture here. I also still have an issue with an increasing gradient right to left. I may try imaging an object to the north away from neighbours lights to see if that is the problem.