Gina

Changed my mind and decided that more Ha data on Simeis 147 would be more useful and would produce a lot more data and I would really like to produce a cracking version of this. Later I might grab some RGB data to colour the stars using masks to make the Ha red and the stars natural colour. It will be later because the weather forecast is for cloud and rain for the next week Now capturing the 120s g600 darks.

Decided on the Heart and Soul in SII 120s subs with g600. Should be able to get about 4hr before they go below the observatory roof. Can't remember if I captured SII before but pretty sure not at g600 so this data should be better if I did. Data faint but there in histogram stretched version.

Not really sure what to do with the rest of the night. If it wasn't for needing a meridian flip I could set something up and leave it running while I go to bed. Unless I can find something to the west of the meridian already.

When I have the 45mm lens on the rig I can capture the IC405/410 and Simeis 147 in the same frame plus a few other DSOs as well. As in this screenshot but the frame moved upwards (to the south).

A single sub 120s OIII of IC405/410 auto-stretched in PI and further stretched in GIMP. Actually, I think IC410 - the Tadpoles - would be better done on it's own with a narrower FOV - say 400mm rather than 135mm making it 3x bigger but would still be rather small. At least this view can be combined with the Ha to make a colour image.

10m and virtually white-out!!! I'm giving up on that. Going over to the Tadpoles...

6m OIII sub auto-stretched in PI the captured from screen and histogram stretched in GIMP to the Nth degree and still I can't see anything resembling the OIII nebulosity seen in that other image (taken with an SBIG camera).

Can't see any nebulosity... Trying 6m...

Captured a couple of 120s OIII subs and auto-stretched one in PI but can't see anything of the DSO. Now trying 240s.

It would appear that I have 98 120s Ha subs of Simeis 147 of which 62 were used with wrong darks to give the interim result posted above. I now have 50 odd more subs tonight so I reckon I now have 150 plus subs of 120s making a total of 300m = 5 hours. The 62 processed before make up about half what I now have and that was a reasonable result so I think perhaps I have enough Ha subs and should try OIII.

Looks like Simeis 147 does have OIII nebulosity and even SII so maybe I'll use tonight to try those or at least OIII depending on how things go and how long I can stay awake Here an image from the 'net.

Looks like I didn't capture the 120s g600 darks after all - at least, I can't find them. My memory seems to be playing up! Firstly I find nearly 100 Ha subs of Simeis 147 that I don't seem to have processed and now I can't find the 80 120s g600 dark frames I thought I'd captured. I think I'll have to get a notebook to log what I do - separately from posting here - I mean pen and paper Tomorrow I need to capture 80 30s g600 darks and 80 120s g600 darks. I already have the 60s g600 darks and master. Then I will have to feed all the lights and darks through Blink to reject duds followed by using BPP on the data.

Here's the result - screenshot of auto-stretch in PixInsight followed by a bit of histogram fiddling in GIMP - background gradient that wants removing but tomorrow I'll collect some correct darks and run the process again.

That's useful

Captured 125 30s Ha subs of the California Nebula, fed them through Blink and 6 were dud so I have 119 left which I'm feeding through BPP though with a master dark that doesn't match because I have yet to capture dark frames of 30s at gain of 600. Now capturing more 120m Ha subs of Simeis 147. I've found a collection I haven't processed yet - don't know how I missed them I'll feed them through Blink when PI has finished the BPP run.

This is another nebula I haven't imaged before

This shows my alignment error. As usual with CdC, south is at the top

Yes, could be.

It's rather small for this FOV. This is a single 30s sub.

Sky's cleared - Simeis 147 is still down in the trees so I'm capturing something else as a test. The California Nebula (NGC 1499).

I see. Set up my all sky cam ready for dark to see when/if the clouds go away - no sign yet - I think it could be 8 or 9pm but we'll see... The grey area is solid cloud the rest is very dark nimbus.

I guess wideband would be fine for finding stars and if you know the location of the DSO with respect to a star (or stars) within the field then this would be a perfectly viable method Thank you I don't seem to be thinking straight ATM! I could simply swap out the Ha filter for a WB one for finding using the current rig. EQASCOM Alignment Clear as mud

I guess I need to do a three star alignment of the mount then it should be right. Do you know, I've never done that - relied on AstroTortilla in the past. Should be simple enough As for comparing cameras, I still have the Astrodon 5nm Ha filter which should give an idea when looking at a hydrogen rich nebula. I don't need a matching lens exactly - a faster lens stopped down would do. eg. I could use a 55mm f1.8 lens on the Atik with 135mm f2.5 on the ZWO. When opened up to f1.8 it could act as an electronic finder if the Atik camera is sensitive enough and will work at around an exposure of a minute or two.

Was that a zoom lens? My memory isn't what it was... A zoom lens would be good if it had a decent aperture. Trouble is they usually have a rather small aperture. I have a Vivitar zoom lens from way back when I had a Pentax Spotmatic SLR film camera. Quite a decent lens actually as I recall, so might give it a go for imaging. 35-105mm focal length and f3.5. Something to look into later. Maybe two stepper motors for control - one for focus and the other for zoom - that would be a nice versatile imaging rig Before that I have Simeis 147 to capture more Ha and I'd like more OIII for IC405/410 I think. Not sure about SII. But I will have to find Simeis 147 first I could do with a wider field finder camera but it would have to be at least as sensitive as the ASI1600. A nice setup would be to have two ASI1600MM-Cool cameras with different FL lenses Guess I should sell one of my 460EXs to pay for another 1600 Of course, I'm assuming the 1600 is the more sensitive as seems the case but is it really? I need to find out! Only sure way would be to have both set up to look at the same area of night sky at the same time with matching filters and lenses of same aperture. I have two of some of the lenses but not filters.

Yes, give it a try - nothing to lose. Maybe it will sit at infinity focus if not controlled which is what you want, though you'd have to find another way of focussing it.