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Having fun with Polaris

Catanonia

By Catanonia
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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Catanonia

Catanonia

Posted
Posted

Don't you hate it when you have a clear sky and no target in mind to go at late at night ?

That was the problem the other night, my main targets had passed by and at 2am I was wanting to go to bed but I had clear skies and no target.

Then I remembered an image I saw sometime ago centred on the Polaris region showing beautiful faint dust lanes. Well that was the target choosen.

Finding Polaris was not a problem :):D, but guiding LOL what a giggle that was. PHD wouldn't take calibration due to the guide star not budging an inch. I suppose I should have expected that and at least it shows my polar alignment is pretty good :)

So in the end I settled for 2 mins unguided unbinned subs in LRGB and left it running till the early morning. This is the 1st time I have ever tried unguided images as I started off directly with a guide scope when I started AP. I wonder how far I could go unguided. Of course being Polaris, it is cheating a bit.

I ended up with nearly 4 hours of LRGB in 2 min subs.

After stacking, I found that Polaris had wandered about 1/3 the way across the image, so that is my 1st experience of field rotation :):D Not too bad I am guessing.

I managed to get some of the dust lanes in the image, but controlling Polaris at F2.8 was fun. Some lovely weird purple colours showing in the spikes after processing, but I can live with that. After all it was just a bit of fun to see what would happen. I might come back to this with the WO66 and get a much wider field of view if the focal ratio will allow the dust to show.

Details

TS SuperNewt 200mm @ F2.8 with corrector

QHY9 mono with QHY 2ich filters LRGB

LRGB 29:29:29:29 in 2 min subs unguided on NEQ6 Pro mount.

About 60% crop on the 568mm focal length due to field rotation.

Full sized image is here AstroBin

Cat

post-16631-13387771978_thumb.jpg

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Tim

Tim

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Not seen this done before, what a great idea :)

I wonder how it would work turning the mount off and having the NCP dead central. You'd get rotation of course, but you could go much longer subs, I wonder how the dust would look.

Cheers

Tim

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Catanonia

Catanonia

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It is a pale blue Cat. Mag. 9 at 18.5 arc secs. from Polaris.

I've been looking to see any small fuzzies too, but can't see any.

Maybe a Hubble Deep Field type exposure next time :).

Ron.

Definately going to try this again and try to hit it with longer subs @F2.8

There was a fuzzy in one of the images, but it was cropped out after alignment. Might take a look at these subs again.

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MartinB

MartinB

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The dust you are after is known as integrated flux. Usually we only see dust when it is illuminated by nearby stars e.g. M27 or silhoetted by emission nebulosity. Integrated flux is dust which is illuminated solely by the light from the Milky Way, i.e. star light. Amazing that we can see it at all. You generally need good dark skies to capture it no matter how fast your scope.

Here's one I found

Polaris Nebula with FSQ-106ED and Reducer QE 0.73x Feb.2010 Light Version | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I captured the flux around M81 and 82 whilst staying with Olly at Les Granges. About 10 hours at F3.7 and an inky black sky. The colour data was very lacking and you can see how much it needed stretching my the microlensing artefacts around the stars.

http://stargazerslounge.com/attachments/imaging-deep-sky/34212d1269424715-m81-82-integrated-flux-work-progress-m81-82-int-flux-1st-edit.jpg

Good luck with your efforts to capture it Cat. A hefty LP filter will be the order of the day!

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Catanonia

Catanonia

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Nice job, tricky to get the IFN. When you say left it running. Do you mean automated? Do you have an auto focus too if the temp changes and you're leaving it running by itself overnight?

Tom.

I framed the image and left the mount switched on to guide itself without auto guiding with a guide scope / camera.

It seems that my polar alignment is pretty good as over 5 hours polaris only moved about 300 pixels.

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Astroscot2

Astroscot2

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I framed the image and left the mount switched on to guide itself without auto guiding with a guide scope / camera.

It seems that my polar alignment is pretty good as over 5 hours polaris only moved about 300 pixels.

I would have thought it should have moved Steve as its not the NCP.

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Quatermass

Quatermass

Posted
Posted
The dust you are after is known as integrated flux. Usually we only see dust when it is illuminated by nearby stars e.g. M27 or silhoetted by emission nebulosity. Integrated flux is dust which is illuminated solely by the light from the Milky Way, i.e. star light. Amazing that we can see it at all. You generally need good dark skies to capture it no matter how fast your scope.

Here's one I found

Polaris Nebula with FSQ-106ED and Reducer QE 0.73x Feb.2010 Light Version | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I captured the flux around M81 and 82 whilst staying with Olly at Les Granges. About 10 hours at F3.7 and an inky black sky. The colour data was very lacking and you can see how much it needed stretching my the microlensing artefacts around the stars.

http://stargazerslounge.com/attachments/imaging-deep-sky/34212d1269424715-m81-82-integrated-flux-work-progress-m81-82-int-flux-1st-edit.jpg

Good luck with your efforts to capture it Cat. A hefty LP filter will be the order of the day!

That shot of M81 and M82 is stunning really really like it so many great images on this forum :)

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