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The Owl Nebula - a bit of a surprise

MartinB

By MartinB
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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MartinB

MartinB

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There were stars peeping through the murk and moonshine, the forecast was for a clearish night but a fair bit of high cloud. With the full moon it was perfect for sorting out jobs, so spent the evening fine tuning the calibration the calibration of the motorised focuser on my LX200. Come midnight, as I was about to pack away the cloud cleared. The Owl was next door to the star I was focusing on, good for narrow band, good for longer focal length...

Meridian flip and left things running over night.

LX200ACF with SXV active optics and QSI 532 ws camera. Some subs lost to wind so ended up with 11x600secs each of Ha and OIII (10 mins was too long for the OIII channel really). Unfortunately the prism for the AO off axis guider was impinging on the optical path and couldn't be fully sorted with flats. Have cropped it out.

Captured, calibrated and combined in Maxim. Processed in PS. Used Ha for the red channel and OIII for both blue and green. The merged with an Ha luminence.

My first DSO for 3 months! Hopefully Spring will bring better fortune.

post-12794-133877359719_thumb.jpg

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Parallax

Parallax

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I'm liking that one Martin. I was wondering what to image last night but the moon was drowning everything out. I forgot that I have Ha & OIII filters, so I should have gone for the Owl too. Oh well.

Steve

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psjshep

psjshep

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Unfortunately the prism for the AO off axis guider was impinging on the optical path and couldn't be fully sorted with flats. Have cropped it out.

I have had that in the past - I have since put a thick washer over the AO prism stalk such that the maximum depth it protrubes such that it no longer casts a shadow or impares the image...

Nice image, btw

Phil.

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bazza

bazza

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Very nice Martin.

Really good image of a difficult object.

Narrowband is sure the way to go in the Moonlight!

I take it the AO pick off the guide star, before the narrowband filter?

Or I wonder if it could get a guidestar through a narrowband filter?

Barry.

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MartinB

MartinB

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Thanks a lot everyone. Good tip with the washer Phil although I guess there are times when you might want to get in close.

Barry, that is the great thing about the SXV version of AO, the prism is in front of the filters unlike with SBIG AO systems. This makes getting a decent guide star much easier. A good guide star is vital to make the AO do it's stuff. Last night I was using 0.2 sec guiding exposures and achieving 4.2 cycles per second, I would have pushed it further if I hadn't been going to bed but there is a risk of loosing the guide star and then the AO has a hissy fit.

Ron, one day I'm sure I will get caught out but with a very solid forecast I figure my kit has cost me too much money to let it sit in the shed on a clear night whilst I sleep!! I don't sleep well though, constantly thinking of all the things that could go wrong.

Have come back from work and had another look at this image. The background is a real dogs dinner and, having had a look at images on the net I realise I've stripped out some faint fuzzies so I'll have another go at the processing.

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MartinB

MartinB

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Thanks guys

That's very nice colour and resolution. Regarding your exposure times, is that F10 unbinned?

Rich.

Sorry Rich, forgot to mention, I was using a Celestron 6.3 reducer which, according to Pinpoint was giving me about F7.

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