M16 over Bristol...where eagles dare!

[cloudbuster]

Good yawning again all...hope your'e all enjoying the sunshine / clear nights!?

right....as some of you may know, i had planned to add to my wizard nebula over this week....but by about 8pm last night, i was getting itchy feet, believing that it might be a waste of a night on the wizard, which would, afterall, be up in the sky right through the winter. so i decided to make the most of things, and after saying my goodbye's to the lovely Lucy, headed out to failand, just outside bristol, in the hope of grabbing my first ever CCD/Ha data on the eagle. after acquiring the target, i let rip with a burst of 5 min subs....but it was murky on the horizon, and PHD responded accordingly....anyone else looking at the graph would of assumed there was an earthquake!....which leads me on nicely to a joke i thought up:

question: what's a PHD user's favourite film?

answer: Flatliners!!!!!

yes....i thought you'd like that one!

anyway, i decided to stop PHD, and after deciding the other stars were no good, clicked on my original one....by which time the seeing had marginally improved! from then on in, i just let it run, and woke up in the car at around 2.15am. still murky, i could just about see scorpio...but only one star in saggi....still i'm quite pleased with the resulting Ha image. Here is the incriminating details m'lud...

M16 The Eagle nebula

Failand, nr Bristol

Camera: Atik 314L

Scope: SW Equinox 80

guide camera: QHY5 with PHD

guide scope: SW Equinox 66

Mount: SW HEQ5

Artimus capture

Deep sky stacker

pixinsight

Ha filter

5.6.13

40 exposures of 300 seconds

flats for Ha filter

6.6.13

taken on a cloudy morning, with white tee-shirt (as flat field panel faulty)

30 exposures

thanks for looking.....and sorry about the joke....guilty as charged!

i await your verdicts....

cheers

bob

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Lovely image. It is frankly amazing that we can now take this quality image without painstaking manual guiding (my back still hurts thinking about that time), and under adverse conditions

[todd8137]

Looks great the detail is brill

pat

[cloudbuster]

thanks guys...i hope to add the S2 and O3 data asap. tonight looks good, but a bit breezy...as is the rest of the week!

[Mark72]

Nicely looking Eagle,

May be you just stretched it too much as the central part got over-saturated.

Mark

[JonH]

Nice one Bob, the image looks great, not so sure about the joke though!

[cloudbuster]

thanks john....tho i think ive mistakenly included a couple of out-of-focus subs! will re-do this evening!

bob

[Gina]

Nice one

[swag72]

Well captured Bob. My comments more about your images in general are that they always seem a little soft. Do you have a good focus routine? I think that softness in an image can make or break it. Do you use a bahtinov mask? Or FWHM?

[fwm891]

Shame about the clouds Bob - look forward to you getting another go with clear stuff. Watch your highlights I think you may have blown them out but it could be the upload.

[sloz1664]

Nice Eagle, I await the updated image with the discarded out of focus subs.

cheers

Steve

[cloudbuster]

thanks guys n gals.

focus is something ive tried to deal with sara, and whilst i agree many of my images are a bit on the soft side, this is i believe down to the optics. don't get me wron...i love my little equinox's, but my '80' is hardly an espirit, tac, etc. as for the focussing itself, i use bahtinov grabber. one day hopefully i can afford one of these expensive scopes and a CCD to match...til then, i'll have to lean a little on the 'soft' side!!!

[swag72]

It may be worth doing a few tests to see if it is the optics Bob - Many people use their Skywatchers to great effect and your 314L+ is a top class CCD producing many excellent pictures.

Could it be guiding issues? That could be determined taking very short subs, on a bright target and seeing if that gives you better sharpness.

How particular are you with the focus? I ask that as I can often spend 5-10 minutes on really trying to fine tune it using a mask and bahtinov grabber.

Just a couple of thoughts, by no means criticism or extolling the virtues of expensive scopes!

[AndyUK]

Very nice indeed Bob! I've never managed to get to a location where I can get to this, and I'm amazed at the amount of signal you've captured - Being so low down, this isn't an easy one to get! I hope you manage to get the full set, but maybe we can catch up sometime for a "testing night" to see if we can get your stars a bit tighter...

[JamesF]

Very nice.

James

[andyo]

Nice capture