Final 127 Mak M27 for this season?

[JamesF]

Had a late start last night as we were out for the evening, but the sky was beautifully clear so I couldn't miss the opportunity. After a few PHD/AA5 niggles I managed to capture about two and a half hours worth of RGB data for M27 in two minute subs. At the moment my alignment doesn't really look good enough for that length of exposure at 1500mm and I ended up throwing out about 30 minutes worth of data before stacking. This is a crop of the frame without any rescaling.

I'm pleased with this as it's an improvement over my previous attempts, but whilst I've said it may be my last image of M27 for this season I know I'm not really done yet. I need better polar alignment so guiding is easier. I'm quite pleased with the red, but I think perhaps I need to go longer to help the blue and perhaps green subs to capture more of the outer regions of the nebula (which needs better alignment). I might have to think about separate exposures for the stars and the nebula too because the brighter stars are saturated. I'm not really sure where I'm going with the stars at the moment. I'd quite like them to be a bit "tighter", but not at the expense of the rendering of the nebula. I still have a lot to learn on the processing front

For the moment though I just fancy moving on to a different target (or two) for a while. Much as I find this PN fascinating, there's a lot more out there to see...

James

[andyo]

That's a great shot with very good detail of the core