Jump to content

SkySurveyBanner.jpg.21855908fce40597655603b6c9af720d.jpg

IC1318 - Gamma Cygni Nebula


Marci

Recommended Posts

Whilst o’er the divide yesterday visiting family, I spotted a 3hr window in the forecast cloud for the coming night. Sods law I’d left all the astro gear at home... so had to banzai it down the M62 and get set up. I knew a cloud bank would roll in from the west and scupper play at some point, and twilight views thru the guidescope showed a pile of thin high-level cloud, so expectations were dampened somewhat. 

cloud.thumb.jpg.74014991d39ac5eb8056c825fe5ae5d2.jpg

 

Whilst pondering on a target I spent a good hour pratting about drift aligning in PHD2 - which I now regret as lost imaging time on this target. My opinions on polar alignment are semi-notorious - I disagree with the necessity to hunt for perfect polar alignment and instead I just opt for vaguely-north, and turn the guiding aggressiveness up and have never had an issue. Anyways, I drifted, I got the trendlines as bangon as I could get using the PHD Drift Assistant. Was that time worth it? Ultimately no. All it resulted in was a nicer looking guide graph than normal... but in reality, the impact on the actual imaging was non existant and I would have got exactly the same shot with my usual 2-deg-left-of-north-on-a-compass-and-swamp-it-with-guidepulses alignment. Heyho. 

 

scr.thumb.jpeg.c274cd8e906e4dff4671d743468a96be.jpeg

 

In the end I shot a grand total of 20mins exposure on the Gamma Cygni Nebula before rain & cloud stopped play, but I can see this becoming a mosaic mission... wasn’t quite ready for the amount of detail that I actually got out of the impendingly-damp skies! Will definitely be revisiting this target...

5 x 240s @ ISO800 of lights, darks (and bias) thru the SW200PDS with the EOS1000D & 12nm HA filter resulted in:

 

129091077_gammacygni.thumb.jpg.8587cb296f5cecbde2c7d3ebe4999bd3.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Found a stacking issue with DSS, and added another 3hrs of data. Due to cloud, encountered huge loss of guiding and big drift part way thru, so this has ended up being reprocessed (for the better) as a 2 pane mosaic! Restacked with Sequator.

 

stitch.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shot an hour of colour last night (180s @ ISO800 - any higher than 180s and light pollution floods the red channel of my full spectrum camera) and blended it in... my processing skills fall over as soon as I attempt Ha-RGB, and I’m rarely happy with the result, but here it is anyway:

 

824505754_sadrhargb.thumb.jpg.52838c578195c74c2569b2bf1d613b17.jpg

 

There are a lot of hot pixels to clean up in there somewhere that Sequator isn’t picking up on and removing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.