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How can you see the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae with a 3 inch refractor?

Joves

By Joves
in EEVA - Reports

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Joves

Joves

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By hooking up a Mallincam, is how!!

Set up the TV-76 with the Xtreme tonight and all I can say is.. Wow! Quite a clear night, but the images through this little telescope with the (big) aid of the Mallincam blew me away with what it was showing. M42 was spectacular as always, but I really thought I had high hopes seeing the elusive Horsehead... Yet, there it was... Faint, but clear as day... And, sitting directly above a 2/3 moon!! Unbelievable!!!

Took a few screen grabs which I will put up as soon as I figure out how to!

All in all, a great night. The fact that I'm about to hit the hay at 5am on a school night is probably a teller of that. Oh well...

Oh, and for anyone wondering... The AZ-EQ6 is an unbelievable mount. Go-to and tracking accuracy on even just a fairly rough and ready Alt-AZ alignment is ridiculously good. And it's so quiet! Thank god for that, as well... I wouldn't be very popular with the neighbours if I was out at this time bashing around the LX90.

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Adumbleton

Adumbleton

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Sounds like a good session. I had a similar idea but less ambitious due to limited time. I pointed a WO Zenithstar 66SD refractor with 0.8x FR/Flattener to some star clusters with Mallincam Extreme attached at sense x128 and AGC 4. Not bad for just ~2 second exposures I thought and some colour as well.

AZ-EQ6GT in AZ mode for v.quick setup as I only had an hour-ish. No wireless exposure controller or computer control used. Recorded on Orion Starshoot DVR, Prtscr into MS Paint for upload. Can't wait to try some long exposures on large nebulae as these stars are rather under sampled at this FoV (effective f/4.7, 310mm, W:1.3 deg, H: 55 arcmin). I agree about the AZ-EQ6GT; tis a fantastic mount. Mine is also home to a C8 XLT at times which is also great for portability for star parties.
Andrew Dumbleton
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Joves

Joves

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Thanks Andrew. Unfortunately I'm unable to see anything in your pic/vid??

Oh, and this post was supposed to say 3" refractor, by the way. Was lacking much needed sleep when I wrote it!

Joves I changed your title  to make it 3" - Mark

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Joves

Joves

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It sure is, Ken. Not nearly as clear as the night you had it up briefly on NSN, but was still definitely easy to make out!

Thanks mate. Looking forward to getting back out there. It's a beautiful little scope, for sure, but I reckon the results in this post say a whole lot more for the Mallincam!!

You haven't broadcast for a couple of weeks... Must be about time put on the boots again, surely?! ;)

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Dragon Man

Dragon Man

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It sure is, Ken. Not nearly as clear as the night you had it up briefly on NSN, but was still definitely easy to make out!

Thanks mate. Looking forward to getting back out there. It's a beautiful little scope, for sure, but I reckon the results in this post say a whole lot more for the Mallincam!!

You haven't broadcast for a couple of weeks... Must be about time put on the boots again, surely?! ;)

Been raining and cloudy.  :embarrassed:

But looking good for Tuesday through till the week after. Our Astronomy camp is from 1st Nov till 5th Nov, so should be good  :smiley:

Now come on, where's those Screen Grabs of yours?  :grin:

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Stu

Stu

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That sounds amazing Aaron, incredible what can be done with such a small aperture. Were you using filters at all?

I still have a Watec 120n+, do you think I could get the HH with that in a 4" apo? Have been trying to sell it but may hang onto it for a while if I can see stuff like that.

Stu

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Dragon Man

Dragon Man

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That sounds amazing Aaron, incredible what can be done with such a small aperture. Were you using filters at all?

I still have a Watec 120n+, do you think I could get the HH with that in a 4" apo? Have been trying to sell it but may hang onto it for a while if I can see stuff like that.

Stu

Stu, the watec 120n might be pushing it to get Horsehead clearly because it is limited to only 5 seconds maximum integration (x256) but you can sort of increase it to act like a 10 second integration with the Gstar-ex4 capture software. The Gstar-ex4 software has a stacking mode that stacks 2 integrated runs together giving an enhanced view.

You will also need a very fast scope. Video Astronomy thrives on 'fast'  :grin:

Light Pollution will makes it harder.

If you can get to a spot where the Light pollution is bearable and push the camera to its limits through a fast scope you might get to see it.

Horsehead is a tough object.

Don't be in a hurry to get rid of the Watec, Try it out some more on other objects. It is fun seeing them pop up on the screen in near realtime in full colour  :smiley:

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Joves

Joves

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Ken, as soon as I work out HOW to actually upload pics onto SGL, I'll definitely pop a couple up... Any help for the useless one here, guys?! Haha

No problem at all Stu. I had run out of stuff to say, so am happy you can add a bit if life to keep it going! :)

As for filters, I had the Astronomik UHC 2" fitted to the diagonal, which did the trick well for most objects. Funnily enough, I had pretty half decent views of the Horsehead, then thought "What the hell am I doing? I have a H-Beta filter!" which is supposed to be THE filter that makes the Horsehead visually possible for most people. Well... I attached the H-beta and, WOWWW... Absolutely NOTHING! Not a brass razoo!! The filter blocked everything, including the flame. In fairness though, I still had the UHC on the diagonal, with the Hb fitted to the camera thread. I'm guessing this was probably the wrong thing to do. I then assumed the UHC might block the Hb spectral line, but looking at the specs, apparently not. Meh... Maybe it's only decent for visual.

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Joves

Joves

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Mark, thanks for fixing the misleading title... Makes it sound like an even more impressive feat now!! ;)

And yes, you really must... Video Astronomy is a lot of fun! I finally got my stuff organised last night to view entirely remotely, so was perched up on the couch all night, going from object to object. Gotta say, it's an enjoyable way of doing things! Dangerous though... Lead to me looking at the clock at 5am thinking "Maaannn... This is gonna hurt in a couple of hours when the alarm goes off!"

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Joves

Joves

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Haha... No no, the little Televue scope!

Hope the little TV monitors work well also... I have a little a Orion DVR arriving this coming week!

Ahhh, you see, I seem to recall the moon coming up as you were taking your pics, so either I'm mistaken or you're just being kinda! Either way, I'll take it!! :)

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Dragon Man

Dragon Man

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Haha... No no, the little Televue scope!

Hope the little TV monitors work well also... I have a little a Orion DVR arriving this coming week!

Ahhhhh, a TV scope  :grin:  Sorry.

I thought you meant a little Television.

I sometimes have a little 4" B&W TV plugged into mine and it looks fantastic!

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Joves

Joves

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A few more.

I had the gain set a little too high for each of these, so they're a bit washed out. Next time will hopefully have no moon, less gain, higher integration. May even try my hand at my very first polar alignment with the new mount, however, for video I reckon it does a pretty good job of tracking even in Alt-Az.

Horsehead and Flame pic is also very faint, but the moon would have literally been only a handful of degrees below it, so pretty good to see it at all, I reckon. It's a first for me, so was excited nevertheless.

Objects are:

47 Tucanae

Tarantula Nebula

Flame and Horsehead

Pleiades (would have loved to have gotten some nebulosity out of these, but not even sure if it is possible with video?!)

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post-30253-0-46089600-1382701537_thumb.j

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post-30253-0-10627600-1382701588_thumb.j

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