NGC2174: Monkey head nebula

[Uranium235]

This is one of the targets ive been hitting over the past few nights (5 clear nights in a row!). Actually, Im grateful for a bit of cloud now so I can have a rest and process what ive collected (it may take some time).

It didnt look much like a monkey at first, until I rotated it by 90deg and my first thought was "monkey!"

Had a couple of problems with the mount, goto calibration was awful. Normally its not too far off the first couple of alignment stars, but this was way out (yes, time/date/location were correct). It will need further investigation to find out whats going wrong as i tried it 4 times and it still did the same very confused dot com.

NGC2174: Monkey Head Nebula

30x450 (Ha)

ED80, Atik314L+, CG5-GT

Flats + Bias

Setpoint: -15

Thanks for looking!

Rob

[West End Wendy]

Wow - that really does look like a monkey!

[Deneb]

flip it around ....

[martin_h]

flip it around ....

Should be facing left !!

[Spr]

Looking good Rob, nice details. You could probably get away with lifting the background a bit, (btw my images are always too noisy so take my advice with a pinch of salt .)

Been trying this target myself and its not the easiest.

Darren

[Zul]

It looks so cool! Great job!

[Uranium235]

Should be facing left !!

I thought about that, but isnt it a matter of taste? Left or right it still looks like a monkey. But having said that I will do another stack later on becuase the background levels were very dark after calibration. I hadnt clipped it, its just the way it came out of maxim (loaded the raw fit file into PS), and the histogram was already hard left before i started stretching the image.

I will have a go a dropping the darks and just processing wih bias and flat.