The horsey and flame nebula (with a twist)

[ollypenrice]

Very nice video, Mike, and a good flaming horsey! While I think the Flame colour is good I feel that the background around the Horse, which is predominantly Ha, might be redder.

Erm, I don't really care for Jaffa cakes so could I possibly swap mine for a 17 inch Plane Wave on a Paramount?

Ta,

Olly

[Jessun]

The encouraging lesson that I've learnt here is not to let even the most miserable seeing put you off imaging. Even if you are in an urban environment, imaging over dozens of nearby street lamps, even if you can't see any stars in the constellation that you're working in - it can be done (even if you do have to align on Jupiter and slew over to the target!).

Very true! And excellent work there too! Cool video, but got no account there to comment...

Thanks for sharing!

/Jessun

[peter shah]

love the Vid very well put together

[MikeWilson]

@sulaco: Thanks, that's kind of you. I thought my voice came out a bit bad actually but nothing some practice (or alcohol!) can't fix!

@Neil: An introduction to astrophotography, that's a good idea... You're absolutely right, it is amazing what amateurs can do with modest kit.

@Roger: I don't know how many people have actually tried imaging under severe LP. Honestly, if I wasn't making a video I wouldn't have done it. The moisture in the air made the LP so much more pronounced that it would be on a typical night. The Astronomik CLS filter is key here when attempting a long exposure although it does impart a colour cast and is quite harsh, it's better than maxing out all the pixels to a pinkish-orange.

@Luke: That's exactly what happened to me, although PHD was pinging like mad I just left it. It re-acquired the guide star eventually but it did mean the subs weren't optimally guided. Eventually I lost everything, even eyeball views beyond the garden(!). Definitely stack those subs and see what you can pull out. You may be surprised!

@TofuBoy: .. and the mist, and the fog, and the dew! :-)

@Olly: Well well - I had a Jaffa cake that I was going to deface for you, for the purposes of a humerous anecdotal photo for the thread but it was eaten before I got the chance. (Sorry, couldn't help myself). Picture a Jaffa cake "mirror" with a bog roll tube on my desk. There's your 1.7 inch chocolate coated mirror on an inflexible dobsonian mount! You make a good point about the background not being as red as it could be. Now, I contemplated using an adjustment layer to saturate the red more but I didn't want to do that as I felt it was 'abusing'/cheating the image a little too much. Whilst I was surprised at the good quality of data (considering the conditions), I was also surprised that it wasn't particularly red. I was expecting more Ha around the horse too. I wonder why?

@Jessun: Thanks

@Peter: Thanks too