North America and Pelican Nebulae

[carastro]

Started imaging at 1.30 am on two nights to get this by the time it rose above the house getting to bed after 4.30 am.   
Taken from Home in SE London Bortle 8.  A lot of cloud spoiled the subs on the 2nd night when I got the colour.

Samyang 135mm F2.8, & Atik 460EX
HEQ5
Ha 16 x 600
Oiii 2 x 300 binned x 2 (clouds spoiled the other 6)
Sii 6x 300 binned x 2
RGB for stars 8 at 150 each
Total imaging time 4 hours 20mins

NB: Cropped version lower down.  This is the full frame to show stars out to the corners. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by carastro

[Gina]

Unusual colour scheme - lovely image though - well done

[MarkAR]

Love it.

[geoflewis]

A mighty fine image Carole, well done. You've got to be loving that lens 👍

Edited March 29, 2020 by geoflewis

[carastro]

Quote

You've got to be loving that lens 

I do.

Quote

Unusual colour scheme

Hubble palette Gina.  The blue might be a bit Teal but if I tried to adjust it to a bluer colour the nebulosity seemed to fade.

Carole 

[rubecula]

That's amazing, I love the star dust.

[Erling G-P]

Stunning image!

Amazing that something like that can be made with a 'humble' 135mm lens!

[groberts]

You should be well pleased with that - excellent.  

[carastro]

Thanks every-one. 

Carole   

[carastro]

Now that every-one has had a chance to examine the corner stars, I am cropping out the Nebula-less top and the processing artefact edge at the bottom.

 

[Notty]

That is simply gorgeous and makes me seriously regret selling my same lens before even using it.  Might I ask how you tackle focusing on a lens like this? Also how critical would you say guiding is for a lens this fast? I have the ASI1600M cmos camera so was wondering if the fast lens+short exposures might negate the need for it, not to mention negating the need for a heath robinson guidescope mounting solution.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Notty

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Very nice image. 🙂 

I did this nebula last year (although not such a widefield) and colour in hubble palette was that same teal sort of shade. Looking about it seems pretty normal.

Steve

[carastro]

Quote

That is simply gorgeous and makes me seriously regret selling my same lens before even using it.  Might I ask how you tackle focusing on a lens like this? Also how critical would you say guiding is for a lens this fast? I have the ASI1600M cmos camera so was wondering if the fast lens+short exposures might negate the need for it, not to mention negating the need for a heath robinson guidescope mounting solution.

Thank you. 

I would imagine with the ASI cameras and the ability to take short exposures and the fast lens you probably could get away without guiding, I would certainly plan to do that myself if I take it on holiday and have to use a travel mount which won't guide.

As regards focus, I have in the past found lens focussing quite difficult, so I bought myself about 18 months ago (with my old lenses) a finely cut Bahtinov mask (see below).  This works very well, but always with a lens there is a tendency to nudge the focus especially if you have to put a dew heater on it.  So I bought the Astrokraken microfocusser and mounting brackets which make focussing really ease to do and to lock.  (Excuse the parcel tape = my Heath Robinson method of attaching the Square Bahtinov plate to a collar so it would fit over the lens, however to my delight I find it fits exactly inside the dew Hood and so I don't even had to take that off to focus. 

 

This is it mounted on my rig.

HTH 

Carole 

Edited March 31, 2020 by carastro