NGC602 in Hydrus

[MarsG76]

Imaging Date: 11-14th November 2017

NGC602: After seeing a Hubble image of NGC602 I thought that this would be a good object to image.

I spent the 3 nights exposing 20 minute subs at ISO800, and the guiding was very good, might even be the best I have ever seen through the 8" and CGEM at 1280mm giving me the confidence that the end result will be nice and detailed.

 

After 3 nights I stacked to see what was starting to come up in the frame, and in a word, not much... a tiny nebulous smudge in the middle of the frame.

When looking more into depth about this Nebula/open star cluster it turned out that it is only 2.7' in size, so that explains the small size. 

I would need 3000-4000mm focal length to get a decent size of NGC602 and this is a magnification I haven't tried imaging at through my kit. The CGEM might not even be accurate or stable enough to image at this FL and result in any useful data since 2032mm seems like it is the limit of auto guide accuracy to get useful detail in subs.

Due to the small size and high magnitude, I decided to stop spending any more time on NGC602 and reset the equipment to image the Dragons Face area (NGC2032) and the Horsehead Nebula both at 2032mm focal length. 

 

Update: I processed the image on 9th February 2018. The result is not impressive, as the objects is only 2.7' in size and at magnitude 15.44, very dim.

 

This is a result of 21 x 1200sec ISO800 HAlpha subs using the modded 40D and Baader 7nm HII filter. Not much intensity for 7 hours of exposure.

 

Clear Skies,

MG

[Shibby]

Well done on having a good go and getting a result - it might be small but I bet it's the only image of it on SGL!

[lux eterna]

Exotic targets like this will never be an easy catch. But still a nice trophy in your astro collection !

Ragnar

[alacant]

9 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

the guiding was very good

Hi. Phew, that looks like a difficult target and yeah, I think it's always worth a try when you get good enough seeing. My longest focus is 1200mm and I find that possible on only one maybe two nights per month. Imaging an 8SE(?) must be even more critical.

Still, if the sky isn't playing I suppose it's always possible to swap to something shorter. 

[des anderson]

Wonderful images and a 8se to boot, well done. Des

[MarsG76]

10 hours ago, Shibby said:

Well done on having a good go and getting a result - it might be small but I bet it's the only image of it on SGL!

Perhaps it is, only my posts regarding this object came up in the search for NGC602... Comparing this Ha data to a image in Google images taken using a Apogee CCD and a 16" f3.75 scope, I'm thinking that perhaps the 8" SCT and the modded DSLR are quite good... comparing to hubble is a mistake... 

[MarsG76]

7 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi. Phew, that looks like a difficult target and yeah, I think it's always worth a try when you get good enough seeing. My longest focus is 1200mm and I find that possible on only one maybe two nights per month. Imaging an 8SE(?) must be even more critical.

Still, if the sky isn't playing I suppose it's always possible to swap to something shorter. 

Yeah it is, simply due to the sheer small size and low surface brightness... if there would be even a slightest amount of drift, it wouldn't take too much to blur out any detail, and being faint, longer subs exposure time is needed, increasing the chance of something to go wrong during tracking and autoguiding.

 

[MarsG76]

7 hours ago, des anderson said:

Wonderful images and a 8se to boot, well done. Des

thanks.. yeah 8SE, but the 8SE OTA is on a CGEM eq mount...