My First Ha with DSLR - Lagoon Nebula

[Gina]

Hardly a proper try - a little glance at the stars last night between clouds as they made their way across the sky. Made the best of it by combining scope shots with wide-field of the same area. Clouded right over by 1am and that was that (probably until next month!!). Started by pointing the combined setup towards Sagittarius and M8/M20 in particular. I have posted the wide-field shots in other threads.

This is the first outing for my recently bought Ha clip filter which I've been dying to try for a couple of weeks since I got it. A southern object enabled me to start earlier than any other part of the sky as that is darkest. I had a problem trying to get focus with the much lower light transmission but the main problem was that it's been so long since I saw any stars that I'm out of practice

This is the result of a mere 6 lights that were good enough to stack. No darks or flats. Was intending to do that today but it's been tipping down. Once we get a decent clear night I'll have another go - last night we had patchy cloud and complete cover by 1am so very little time. This is the full frame just scaled to 1024px wide for posting here. I have to sort out a proper way to select the red channel only as well as better focus plus darks and flats etc.

[mgirdwood]

Hi Gina, still a good image for just 6 subs

i like the idea of the Ha shooting, quick, question, does the the CLS filter fit into the reducer or the bayonet adaptor ? i amy just have to order one this weekend

Mark

[Gina]

Hi Gina, still a good image for just 6 subs

Thank you

i like the idea of the Ha shooting, quick, question, does the the CLS filter fit into the reducer or the bayonet adaptor ? i amy just have to order one this weekend

Mark

Both the Ha and CLS are clip-in filters that fit into the camera just behind the bayonet. You can only have one in at a time. But if you're using Ha (Hydrogen alpha) you don't need any other filter - Ha filter blocks all light pollution except a very small amount of white light that occupies the pass-band of the Ha filter. More info here :- http://www.astronomi...ter-system.html

I got my clip filters from Bernard at Modern Astronomy :- http://www.modernast...onomik.htm

[JamesF]

Shame the weather didn't allow you to do it justice, Gina. Even visually with a relatively small scope I think the Lagoon is impressive.

James

[sologuitarist61]

Well done Gina, nice image

[Shibby]

That's a good start Gina, you just need more subs and perhaps longer ones! (what was the sub length?)

I know what you mean about focusing, you need a bright star and if the focus is far out to start with there's no hope! It does help to take 15s focusing shots at max ISO.

[Gina]

That's a good start Gina, you just need more subs and perhaps longer ones! (what was the sub length?)

I know what you mean about focusing, you need a bright star and if the focus is far out to start with there's no hope! It does help to take 15s focusing shots at max ISO.

These were 20 secs at ISO 3200 and -4C so total time was only 120s ie. just 2 minutes total time. So a quick try was all it amounted to Next clear night I'll do some more...

[nytecam]

Good effort Gina ;-) - this cloudcover is very frustrating ;-(

[Gina]

Not arf!!!

Thank you

[mindburner]

great stuff! I would like to try this but the focusing puts me off. Do you have any details of the HA filter you use?

many thanks

[Gina]

The filter is the Astronomik 12nm Ha EOS clip filter which I bought from Modern Astronomy.

Focussing is just sllightly more tricky but the Bahtinov mask still works.