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M97, The Owl Nebula, up close and personal

Tim

By Tim
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Tim, that's extraordinary. Like Rob I'd put that an order of magnitude ahead of any amateur Owl I've ever seen. Truly spectacular and packed with information as well as being very beautiful. Getting an EQ6 to guide at two and a half metres would be beyond me but you've certainly done it.

One of the all time great SGL images without a doubt.

Low bow!

Olly

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Tim

Tim

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Thank you very much for the kind comments :)

One of the things that made this easier was my Celestron OAG with its rotating and tilting prism. You do need a brightish star to guide on at f10, and for this one I imaged it both sides of the mount, but never struggled to find a suitable star.

Cheers

Tim

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Tim

Tim

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Thats one Heck of a finely tuned (EQ6 RIG) you have.

Well, it's just a standard EQ6, albeit mounted on a pier. No upgrades, no greasing, no PEC. And it's over four years old ;)

The main thing is getting polar alignment as accurate as you possibly can, so that the guiding setup only has to correct fluctuations in the performance of the mount.

It varied night to night, on breezy nights I was applying corrections every 0.5 seconds to ensure the star stayed reasonably centred, and up to 3 seconds on calmer nights. Using Ha and Oiii filters at f10 also meant that minor jumps and flicks didn't alter the substance of the data too much over the course of a 30 minute exposure.

And of course, the recycle bin has more than a couple of shots that didn't make the grade :)

Thanks again

Tim

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Chris

Chris

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I've searched the APOD archive for M97's and they are brilliant images, but what you've achieved here clearly has so much more detail! Stunningly good Tim, its so amazing what can be achieved from our back gardens now days:)

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fatwoul

fatwoul

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Very nice. These new-fangled, tube-shaped Atiks and their tiny pixels are clearly made for objects like this. But how you managed to get 35 hours on it, this time of year, with this much cloud, that's the most impressive part for me.

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