Old Nikon 180 has Soul

[Magnum]

Have been trying out various camera lens over the last month and Ive just purchased a Nikkor 180mm F2.8 ED lens circa 1986 and spent last night giving it first light on the stars, besides a little tilt in 2 corners im quite pleased with it so far.

First image IC 1848 the Soul Nebula: 10 x 10 min Ha subs with the lens stopped down to f4 & my Atik460 CCD, guided, captured, stacked and DDP in MaximDL, final processing in Photoshop. Bottom left you can see part of the heart nebula, decided against trying to fit them both in the frame, as I have the larger Atik383 to do a better composition of both next time.

2nd image Quick Horsehead from last night . Please forgive that its a little noisy, was the best I could do with only 4 subs before it passed behind a tree, I would normally wait until I get some more data, but not looking likely now as the moon will be near Orion for the next week then it will be getting lost into twighlight. I always like to try new equipment on this target as the bright star Alnitak is a real test of camera and optics, though it means ive posted about 6 versions of the horsehead this year LOL each with different combination of gear. I purchased this lens due to the lovely 18 point refraction spikes it gives on stars due to the 9 Nikkor straight aperture blades, I must say im very happy how it handled this test.

Exp details: 4 x 10 mins with the Nikon 180mm f2.8 ED AF set at f4, with the Atik460 CCD, guided, captured, stacked & DDP in MaximDL, processed in Photoshop. cropped a lot off the bottom edge to help the composition.