NGCs7635 and 6888 in HA...

[fatwoul]

This is what happens when I don't have a plan, and don't do my homework. I end up with a clear night, and no idea what to point the scopes at. I mithered around, and only settled on 6888 with a little over an hour left before it disappeared into my ZBS ("Zenith Blind Spot" ):

After that fizzled out, I wandered around only to eventually find 7635, again about an hour or so before it went out of reach:

Both were using my 314L+ and HA filter on my MN190, guided by the Titan on the ED80. The Crescent is 8x600sec, and the Bubble is 9x480sec. I'm a little disappointed by the trailing stars on the Crescent, but I may have an explanation: I spent this afternoon carefully balancing the whole rig. Prior to now, I hadn't bothered for a while, the result being that it was counterweight-light, and MN190-heavy (as opposed to ED80-heavy, since they sit side-by-side on a dual bar). Oh, and the MN190 was bottom-heavy, too. All in all, a big unbalanced mess, but amongst that mess seemed to be just what was needed to take out the slop in the gears. Now it's all balanced, it seems like things are a little too loose again!

I think I'm going to have to deliberately unbalance things slightly.

[MartinB]

Seems that you have made excellent use of unplanned time. I particularly like the delicate outer areas of the bubble and you have controlled the bright areas nicely. Good work on the processing

[AndyUK]

I like these a lot... especially the bubble - I think I'm crescented out at the moment!

I got caught on the hop last night and didn't realise it was a reasonably clear night until it was too late... I tried telling my wife that was the benefit of having an observatory, but she's not swallowing it...!

(PM sent... )

[RobH]

Fine images, especially the bubble.

Cheers

Rob

[dc509]

Very nice - good bubble!

d

[fatwoul]

Thanks guys!

I'm quite pleased with the Bubble myself, especially considering the lack of planning. I'll admit, I didn't even know about it until last night. I was in the dome, trying to decide what to image next, and just had a nose around the first page of Imaging - Deep Sky to see what other people were firing at. Yeah, I was basically copying the other kids but let's say instead that I took inspiration from everyone else. This is a lovely target and I'm definitely going to spend some more time on it.

Bitt worried about my guiding, though. The whole unbalancing thing is confusing me. Can anybody explain how I should unbalance my mount to get the slop out? Mr. Richards alludes to it early on in MEPC, but I can't find the specific page where he explains it. It feels like I've unbalanced in too many different axes, but I was just trying to create an imbalance that existed in each direction to guarantee I hit it.

[AndyUK]

I'm only just getting to grips with this myself, but I believe the idea is to get it in perfect balance in all axes... and then immediatly after you slew to the target, shift the weights either up or down a tad to make the mount East-heavy so that the RA worm has something to push against.

At the moment, with objects in the North-East, my OTA is tilted towards the East and the weights are towards the West, so I shift the weights towards the OTA by about 1cm...

(I hope I've got this right...? If not I'm sure I'll be corrected soon enough!)

[fatwoul]

Ahh excellent, thank you Andy. I'll go and do that now!

The thing about unbalancing when you reach a target which always bothered me: by the time you're slewing to your target, you've already done your alignment, so shoving weights around could misalign the whole thing, right? I guess the trick is to do it carefully.

[shaunster]

Great stuff, looks like you got the hang of the CCD world then!

I guess the trick is to do it carefully.

Indeed

[hellothere123]

sweet!

[Grinde]

That bubble is soo detailed! Fantastic shot, please please shoot some S2 & O3 too

[fatwoul]

I'm on it. Did a few more HA subs first, but now I'm doing OIII. I'll see how they look and then run some SII if there's still time.

[fatwoul]

Here's a HOO version:

I dunno. Something is lacking compared to the original HA. Any ideas?

Oh, and the trailing is still happening. I don't understand it, really. Slowly but surely, over the course of the evening, the target gradually slipped a small amount down the screen. But PHD was still guiding, and the star it was following was still in the middle of its little green square, with no flashing "I can't do it" alerts from PHD. Flexure in the system, between the two scopes? I couldn't make the rig east-heavy, as per Andy's explanation, because the rig moves from OTA-east to counterweights-east during the session, and I didn't think I should mess with it mid-way.

[Deneb]

Maybe the lack of star colour ! I think thats whats a bit needed.

Nadeem

[fatwoul]

Cheers Nadeem, I think you're right. In fact the original HOO does have star colour, so I'll see if I can bring it back without getting too much of the cyan halo I was getting before.

[Beyond_Vision]

You may not have planned it but the execution is pretty damn fine. A great nights work

Regards

Kevin

[James]

Both images are nice but I too like the Bubble one

Planning? Who needs it....

James

[Spr]

Nice images, bubble is particularly good.

Darren

[Fay]

Great Bubble, like the framing

Fay

[fatwoul]

Thanks, all. I mustn't let this result make me complacent about forward planning, though.

Fay, I wish I could take credit for the framing, but in all honesty I did what I always do: I set the camera running in 8x8 binned 1 second looping, and just put the brightest part of the object as dead-centre as I could get it. I didn't rotate the camera, because I wanted to be able to line it up with features on the crayford, so I could change filters.

I was pleased with the framing when I saw it, though.

[Grinde]

I'm on it. Did a few more HA subs first, but now I'm doing OIII. I'll see how they look and then run some SII if there's still time.

Niice, that'll be awesome!

If you decide to use the Ha as lum, you might as well shoot the o3 & s2 binned, to save a lot of time.