Cone Neb (Ha) - 200/1200 newt

[CraigT82]

Did a little experimenting last night with 2hrs worth of shorter (300s) binned Ha exposures to avoid horizontal blooming on the 8300 sensor. 

Seems to have worked quite well with only a smidge of the blooming visible on the brightest star which disappears upon stretching. 

Definitely not getting as deep as id like though, compared with the 1200s used previously.

Quick calibration and stack in APT, then levels stretch and noise reduction in gimp and exported as jpg.  Slight tweak of brightness on phone using ps xpress as it appeared very dark on mobile device compared to monitor.  

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by CraigT82

[CraigT82]

Here is 2 hrs of O3 added to the 2 hrs Ha as HOO. O3 was 600s exposures but still didn't pick up much.

Also the stars in all the O3 frames were all rugby ball shaped across the whole frames. Not sure why as the guiding was well under half the imaging scale throughout. 

[AbsolutelyN]

That's stunning Craig.  Star shapes look good to me, especially given such long exposures. First time guiding at long focal length last night myself and I had to cut my exposures to 60 seconds to get reasonable shapes.

[CraigT82]

Ah you're too kind! Were you using the 250PDS last night? That is a big beast to guide!

[AbsolutelyN]

2 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Ah you're too kind! Were you using the 250PDS last night? That is a big beast to guide!

You should see my 2 min exposures! Truly awful shapes. Is this at 1200mm or do you have a coma corrector that's reducing focal length a bit? 

Yes I setup the 250 last night, last minute decision so balance was rushed and could not get very long exposures. I think it's pushing my EQ6AZ to the limit really. 

[CraigT82]

Yes 1200mm... I'm not using any corrector. Coma is there but not offensive at F/6. I also shot shot 1 minute broadband reds to upload to HOYS (NGC2262 is one of their target clusters) and even those had little rugby ball stars. I wonder if my guide cam cable was dragging. Only way I can think of to explain it really! 

Yeah might be a bit much for a AZEQ6, it must be quite a bit heavier than my 8" and also more of a sail too and I think mine is right at the max for my EQ6. 

I'm gutted I missed out on the 130pds on the sale section yesterday!