gorann

Thanks a lot Olly - made my cloudy day!

Thanks Adam, but maybe it is just that pint you had?

Seems that you have to be lucky with SW mounts, or you will have to spend time as a mount mechanic. Fortunately I am quite happy with my NEQ6 and EQ8 (after fixing backlash). They give me 0.8 and 0.4 guiding, respectively, on good seeing nights. So I just keep my fingers crossed that I will not have to take them apart. For my Mesu, guiding seems only to be limited by seeing or wind, but that is Mesu.

I and Olly @ollypenrice have has some interesting email discussions and analyses of the image this afternoon. I have reduced the brightness slightly and brought out a bit more details as the data would allow that, and then fixed some small odd patches that seemed overly blue and related to dark patches on in red channel of unknown origin. Olly must have a photogaphic memory of all the AP he has seen, so he spotted them. Thanks Olly!

Thanks Adam - you just convinced me of my next target! I had recently seen it called the Gobie nebula - not sure if that is an official name, and I have found no proper designation for it. https://www.astrobin.com/j0keb9/

Thanks Richard! Although someone seeing it told me it looks like a predator coming in from above swallowing a pray that screams out its fear. I can see that.

Thanks a lot Olly! Yes, this camera is really good at picking up both blue and red. It could also be that the low noise allows for more stretching than usual. I will have a look for more details.

Thanks, much appreciated!

Thanks a lot for you kind words. I hope you camera arrives soon - I had to wait half a year for mine.

Thanks Adam, you are much to kind!

Thanks a lot Jeremy, much appreciated!

Thanks! Yes, it suprised me too. Great fun to process.

Thanks guys! Much appreciated. The colours are quite rich but that is the way they came out - I did litte to enhance them. I can only blame the fantastic camera.

The moon is almost gone so I got the colour camera back on the RASA 8. I finally had good seeing last night, probably because it was also rather gusty. So I had guiding around 0.8"/pixel, which is good for my old NEQ6, and ok when I image at 1.94 "/pixel. Also the ASI2600MC must have got attached perfectly since the stars were round all the way to the corners for once. I used no darks (not needed with this low-noise camera) or flats since I have managed to keep the system dustfree so far. This fantasy provoking nebula is very faint so f/2 helped getting most out of a short night. I managed to grab 68 x 4 min, so about 4.5 hours. EDIT: When I see it posted it may be that I should tune down the sky brightness a bit?

Thanks so much Carole!

Thanks, much appreciated!

Thanks a lot Mark!

Thursday nigh I collected Oiii with the RASA 8 from both Sh2-119 (bicolor posted yesterday) and on the Lion Nebula. I combinded these with Ha data that I collected about a week ago. The RASA 8 if an f/2 telescope and Ha was collected with the high-speed Baader Ha filter but for the Oiii I used the ordinary 8.5 nm Baader Oiii filter and it seems to work well. This makes me wonder if not the "high-speed" filters just are filters with a broad bandwidth. Ha in the red channel and Oiii in the blue channel, and I made a synthetic green channel by 50:50 mixing of the Ha and Oiii data. Then I tweeked the colours towards an RGB look. All done in PS except initial calibration and stacking in PI. Ha: 54 x 5 min. Oiii: 26 x 5 min. ASI1600MMpro set at gain 139, offset 50, -20°C. My NEQ6 did the tracking. Sharpless 2-132, aka the Lion Nebula, is a faint emission nebula on the Cepheus/Lacerta border, estimated to be at a distance of about 10,000 light years.

Thanks Tomato! Yes, a lot to like with this scope and especially nice that filters are not a problem - maybe the Baader high-speeds are just broad bandwidth filters, and really should be their cheapest ones. They refuse to declare the bandwidth but I think an earlier batch of high-speed Ha filters were marked 10 nm. I just processed a HaOiii on the Lion Nebula (Sh2-132) with the same setup that I will post shortly.

Thanks Mark! It is nice to make progress🙂

Thanks a lot for that very positive Nordic comment! My obsy is just a few km from Valhalla😎

I now think normal NB filters work as long as they are not too narrow in the bandwidth. My Oiii is a 8.5 nm filter. The 3 nm filters would probably not do so great at f/2. So at f/2, cheaper is better😉

The moon is out so time for NB imaging and I continue trying out my new RASA 8. The RASA 8 is an f/2 telescope so normal narrowband filters work poorly. So far I have only one of those dedicated high-speed filters (only Baader makes them) and I recently collected Ha from this object with the High-speed Baader Ha filter but I am still waiting for the High-speed Baader Oiii filter (apparently in production) and a high-speed Sii filter is on the way in the mail from Germany. Last night in desperation I put on my 8.5 nm Baader Oiii filter to se if I could get anything, and it turned out I got quite a lot of signal, and no annoying reflexes. So here is the result of a Ha-Oiii imaging attempt of Sh2-119, the less well known nebula just "to the left" of the North America Nebula. Ha in the red channel and Oiii in the blue channel, and I made a synthetic green channel by 50:50 mixing of the Ha and Oiii data. Then I tweeked the colours towards an RGB look. All done in PS except initial calibration and stacking in PI. Ha: 69 x 5 min. Oiii: 30 x 5 min, so tatally 8.2 hours. ASI1600MMpro Gain 139, offset 50, -20°C. NEQ6 mount.

Yes, the Maksutov-Newtonian telescope is a really elegant solution unless you for some reason like optic artefacts like star spikes. Still there have been rumours that SW may stop producing the MN-190, so run and buy!!!

Olly, in my experience the main threat to a good imaging night are not clouds but the computers. Right now I only run one of my three obsies/rigs and it is the new RASA with one laptop only dowloading images and running PHD2. I have it in flight mode to avoid any Bill Gates interferance. However, nights are getting longer and the moon is declining so I will fire up more rigs and soon get into trouble..... Key message is stay in flight mode and no upgrades.