Crescent Nebula

[Somerled7]

The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus. I have been trying to get into Narrow-Band imaging for about a year, gradually adding a cooled mono camera, filters, filter wheel and electronic focuser to my kit. I have finally got everything working together (almost!) and have something I think is worth sharing. This is an HOO image with 1hr 15min of H-alpha and 1 hr of OIII. I had hoped to get twice that amount but I left the kit running unattended and when I came back the camera had hung up on downloading images, so I lost a couple of hours. I think it was an intermittent USB problem, so still some things to sort out! 

Equipment: Skywatcher HEQ5 mount, Altair Astro EDF72 scope with 0.8 reducer giving F4.8 at 345mm focal length, Altair Astro 183MM cooled camera, Baader 7nm H-alpha filter and 8.5nm OIII filter.  I've used minimum gain and 300s subs to try to avoid saturating the stars, which I find happens very easily with this camera.  I think I still need to experiment with the spacing behind the field flattener as the star shapes go off in the corners, but I don't think they are too bad until you pixel peep.

Any suggestions for improvement welcome. 

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Somerled7