witch head nebula disaster

[alacant]

Hi everyone

No laughing out loud please; a nearby gibbous moon and a faint reflection nebula. I started optimistically at 3 minutes and nearly fried the sensor. So here we are in 40 exposures of 60s. It is there I think. You just need to use a little imagination!

Thanks for looking and here's looking forward to the next 5-minute+ nights because I think that's what this is gonna need...

tair3s on canon 700d: 40 minutes @ ISO800

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Top marks for at least trying. It is frustrating isn't it?

Steve

[carastro]

You did better than me from a town, what's the LP like in Alicante, i.e. what Bortle scale?

Carole 

[alacant]

Hi. In the city centre, it's as bad as you can imagine but we are out in provincial Alicante. Maps give us grade 4 but I don't know what that means because the sky depends so much on wind direction and humidity rather than light pollution.

Cheers and thanks for looking.

[alacant]

11 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Top marks for at least trying. It is frustrating isn't it?

Thanks. Yeah, with the next decent moon free night a week away and with it on the meridian so early, it becomes a race against time...

[david_taurus83]

That's not bad at all for 40 x 60s. Another 40 would reveal more. 240 would make a good image!

[alacant]

10 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

That's not bad at all for 40 x 60s. Another 40 would reveal more. 240 would make a good image!

Yeah. Do you think lots of short or fewer long? It looks like a throw-all-the-time-you-can-at-it type target; e.g. galaxies seem to respond better to longer exposures... Never done anything like this before.

[david_taurus83]

I'd say given your climate your restricted to shorter subs with your uncooled dslr. So lots of shorter ones. What temp does your sensor typically report?

[geordie85]

42 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi. In the city centre, it's as bad as you can imagine but we are out in provincial Alicante. Maps give us grade 4 but I don't know what that means because the sky depends so much on wind direction and humidity rather than light pollution.

Cheers and thanks for looking.

At bortle 4 you should be able to see the milky way. From the images you produce I'd imagine you've got good skies. 

To out it into context, my "dark site" that I travel to is bortle 4.

[alacant]

16 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

your sensor typically report?

On the witch, ambient 10° so I'd reckon 20°, although it doesn't seem to make much difference. Even in summer with the sensor at 30°. I suppose the dither helps.  Dunno...

[alacant]

3 minutes ago, geordie85 said:

see the milky way.

Hi. Yes we can, but I don't think that depends on light pollution, rather on the local weather. Being only 10km from the coast, the humidity and wind direction seems to be the deciding factor.

[Pompey Monkey]

It IS faint! I went to La Palma to get my data.

Well done Sir.

[ollypenrice]

You certainly have it and no mistake. However, it is about as sensitive to moonlight as any object up there because it's a broadband reflection nebula. (There is Ha signal in the region but mostly not associated with the main object.) Like anything faint it will respond to the longest subs you can allow it as dictated by your skyglow.

Olly

Edit: By the way, your system has not thrown up flares from Rigel. Whether or not it does is purely a matter of luck. Some do, some don't. You should be good to go on this once you get dark skies, though it's getting late in the season. Catching it over the meridian is the best way.

[iwols]

its there alright ,even with my eyes ,got to have another go at this object

[wxsatuser]

I tried it once from home with a dslr and it did'nt even show with our LP.

I was rather surprised and thought my aim was off. ?

[reezeh]

I'd say that's far from a disaster @alacant ??

[alacant]

On 18/02/2019 at 14:13, wxsatuser said:

did'nt even show with our LP

Hi. I wonder why not? Do you think it was the camera setting that was at fault? I feel sure that 5+ minute snaps are gonna nail it, DSLR or some expensive monochrome camera alike. Or are you saying that the conditions were poor, or that you couldn't get more than 1 minute exposures? 

I must admit to being ignorant of the whole LP (light pollution?) Bortle thing. Maybe there is too much importance attached to it? Until we came to this forum, we'd never heard of it!

Cheers

 

[wxsatuser]

This is my LP and this is only the close stuff and it is on every night.

Unfortunately Orion, especially the bottom half, runs right through the South coast light doom here.

This is why I only do Ha narrowband.

[TareqPhoto]

Tell me about it, i live in Bortle 8 i think and i keep trying to get used to it, sometimes i feel the sky is good enough to start with, and another time i feel i have no much hope for many targets, so far what i was able to get are as following "Orion, Pleiades, Cygnus targets, Rosette, glimpse of M31, also tiny glimpse of Flaming stars and M81/M82", i tried to get Wizard Nebula twice and this Witch head once and i failed, but i don't know why i failed when i got something with other targets i mentioned so far.

[alacant]

11 hours ago, wxsatuser said:

my LP

Hi. OMG that is ridiculous; I see what you mean. My hat is off to you to get images under those conditions. Quite admirable.

One thing I noticed on a visit to UK -albeit many years ago- was how much night lighting there was. Even between towns. But above all, the proximity of the posts carrying the lights. Why are they so close together? Why are there so many of them? Such a waste of energy and clear skies.

[wxsatuser]

Think it was about three years a go the street lights were upgraded but at the same time more sprouted.

We have at least 20 lights in a 100metre radius.

The football club floodlights used to be about 2 nights but now they have a plastic pitch and it's every night.

To the north of the footie club are two schools lit up by loads of lights and pitch/court lights.

At least narrowband does cut through it.