IC5146 as well as Caldwell 43 with C14EdgeHD

[sergeC14]

Hello Gents,

I usually open up the observatory when the skies are clear regardless of work the day after. But, I was so frustrated with Myself/My site/My tube performance in planetary imaging that I did not do anything for the past two weeks. Anyhow, these last 2 nights, I decided to get back to what I do best (but far from perfect:() deep-sky imaging with the C14EdgeHD and a color Atik-11000CM CCD. I especially have a thing for small far away galaxies like Caldwell 43 (NGC7814):

It is the result of 24x600Sec exposures; average transparency and seeing .

if you look at the full version:http://www.sergepetiot.com/wp-content/gallery/deep-sky/NGC7814_2.jpg you'll notice that the background is full of 100's of tiny galaxies... I checked with "Carte du Ciel" which has the PGC catalog and one of the brighter one was Mag 21.46, so I think the limit magnitude on this shot is about Mag 22...

Then, last night I decided to shoot IC5146 in Cygnus. I saw some wonderful shot of it on the net, and it almost fits my CCD with the C14 focal length perfectly. It's the result of 18x600Sec exposures. I tought that this nebula would be very hard to process(not much signal), but at the end all I did is adjust the curves under Maxim and that was it:

I think this nebula is just like the nearby IC1396, it requires excellent transparency and seeing which was the case here last night. When I saw the first exposure, I thought I did not have much to work with, but everything was there. full res is here:http://www.sergepetiot.com/wp-content/gallery/deep-sky/IC5146curves.jpg

Let me know what you think of them; any favorite?

Rgds

Serge