Some tricky nebs from a few days ago

[RobertI]

Had a clear night a few days ago and thought I would try some more challenging objects. Probably chose a bad night as the moon was just past first quarter and the sky transparency was not great with wispy cloud. The results were disappointing to be honest and even Ha did not seem to help for some reason. All captures with an RC6 at F4.5 with a filterwheel and Lodestar Mono using Starlight Live.

Would be interested to hear people's views on how best to view these objects with EAA.

Abell 21 (The Medusa Neb - looks a bit like the Dolphin Neb):

IC410 (The Tadpoles)..

Using Ha on the IC410 was not as good as I had hoped, even at 60 seconds....

NGC2371, an interesting shaped PN looking a bit like a boiled sweet in its wrapper, first in mono.....

...and in colour....

NGC2264 (The Cone Neb). More difficult than I expected, first in mono..

..and in Ha (it was still faint even at 60 seconds) ...

Finally Sh 2-235...

 

***PLEASE IGNORE THE FOLLOWING DUPLICATE IMAGES - I AM UNABLE TO REMOVE THEM, PERHAPS A HELPFUL MOD CAN OBLIGE ***

[Chris]

Hey Rob, I like the 'boiled sweet PN' I think it should be named that from now on  The cone is pretty good too, you can see the outline clearly. 

[RobertI]

7 minutes ago, Lockie said:

Hey Rob, I like the 'boiled sweet PN' I think it should be named that from now on  The cone is pretty good too, you can see the outline clearly. 

Thanks Chris, the Cone was really hard and surpisingly faint, possibly the conditions didn't help but I have renewed respect for the imagers who produce those amazing long exposure images! On a side note I find EAA is really helps me understand the problems faced by long exposure imagers as I get to see many of the same things but in a handful of minutes rather than hours and can play with them on the fly (eg: trailing, bloating, noise, effectiveness of narrow band v full band, colour v mono, effectiveness of F ratio, focus shift, etc)...just a random thought!  

[Chris]

I remember trying to image the cone myself, unguided, I think using a modded 500D. Like you say a really tricky target with short exposures.

It does sound like you EAA is good for perspective. I guess there's only so long you can go after say M27, M57, M31, M13 etc before you want to expand out, the slippery slope to fainter objects and of course a harder time imaging.