Elephant's Trunk

[MichaelMan]

Hi all
Finally had chance to use my RedCat51 to target a nebula. 
From my location I'm limited to FOV roughly 40 deg above horizon due to surrounding houses, and only NW to NE. 
Friday was not looking good, so I didn't bother setting anything up (weather app was showing ok from 9PM but I stopped trusting them long time ago 😉 ) but around 23:00 I looked outside and was stunned how nice was the sky. 
So decided better late then never, and started setting everything up, once all was set up and polar aligned guess what, thick clouds rolled in, I decided to wait, and about 30 min later it cleared, so I started shooting. 
Didn't manage to get any calibration frames but I'm pretty happy with the result. 

46x 240s lights with dithering, no calibration frames 
ASI533 and Optolong L-Extreme which I believe helped a lot, I'm in bortle 5/6 
Stacked, and initial stretch and processing in SIRIL, and some corrections in PS and LR
 

[Blazar]

Very nice indeed !  I might have to give that a go at some point (probably too late now I would imagine).

[MichaelMan]

Hi @Blazar 
The nebula is still nicely positioned and high on horizon so give it a go.
Nebula season hasn't finished yet 🙂 

[knobby]

On 10/05/2021 at 09:57, MichaelMan said:

Hi all
Finally had chance to use my RedCat51 to target a nebula. 
From my location I'm limited to FOV roughly 40 deg above horizon due to surrounding houses, and only NW to NE. 
Friday was not looking good, so I didn't bother setting anything up (weather app was showing ok from 9PM but I stopped trusting them long time ago 😉 ) but around 23:00 I looked outside and was stunned how nice was the sky. 
So decided better late then never, and started setting everything up, once all was set up and polar aligned guess what, thick clouds rolled in, I decided to wait, and about 30 min later it cleared, so I started shooting. 
Didn't manage to get any calibration frames but I'm pretty happy with the result. 

46x 240s lights with dithering, no calibration frames 
ASI533 and Optolong L-Extreme which I believe helped a lot, I'm in bortle 5/6 
Stacked, and initial stretch and processing in SIRIL, and some corrections in PS and LR
 

Very nice.