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Another Eagle has landed... (M16 in Ha)

SteveL

By SteveL
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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SteveL

SteveL

Posted
Posted

I`ve been after this one ever since I (stupidly) tried to bag it with an unmodified 350D a few years back... I learnt quickly after that episode!

Its really low in he sky, way down in the murk from the UK, but its probably the best time of the year to image it. I know the sky wasnt great last night, turned a bit murky as the mositure dropped out of the sky, and then a bit misty early this morning, but considering it is so low, and the sky wasnt truly "dark", I am happy with this image.

This was also first light for the Alan Gee telecompressor. The C11 does not provide a very flat field for large chip CCDs (see the closeup version of my M13 a while back for reference), and I had tried the 6.3 focal reducer several times before, but in the 18+ months I have had the Alan Gee unit, I had never tried it. Looking at the image, it gives a better flat field, but nowhere near perfect. CCD Inspector gives some dodgy results on the FITs files, probably because of the nebula in the center affecting its calculations.

Last weekend I spent some time arranging the kit so the back focus is somewhere near correct for the Alan Gee unit when using the Celestrin Off Axis Guider, and at the same time, ensuring that the lodestar guide camera is also in focus at the same time. Last night, all the bits went back together again, and everything worked first time.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD, plus CCD Commander

OTA: C11 + Alan Gee Telecompressor (@f/5.9)

Guiding: ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD

Imaging: M25C + MaximDL, 1×600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (100 bias, 100 flats)

Stacked: DeepSkyStacker

Post Process: PSCS2

(Click on image for larger version)

20090623_m16_ha_800.jpg

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RobH

RobH

Posted
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Very nice result Steve, the more so as it's only 600 secs and M16 is so low.

Like some of the others, this whole region is inaccessible to me too.

Are you planning to add to it?

Cheers

Rob

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MikeD

MikeD

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Very nice Steve, smoooth for 10 min's:cool: and a good reminder that I should be imaging this at the mo and not M27, since I went to the trouble of puting in a drop down window and removable roof rail in my obs just so I could image it.:)

Mike.

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SteveL

SteveL

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Are you planning to add to it?

If I get a chance in the next week or so, I`ll try adding some OIII into the mix. If the sky just wont let me go that low, I have another use for my OIII filter that I would like to try out :)

(Note: The OIII filter I have has never been used... ever!)

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Tim

Tim

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Great result Steve. Is that the whole frame? I have talked the mrs into coming away for a weekend somewhere where I can get this one, maybe back to Lucksall.

You'll have a shock with the [O-III] filter. I was really surprised at how much you dont get with it, I mistakenly used the [O-III] again last night instead of [s-II] and even though the exposure time has doubled compared to the Ha, there is hardly anything in comparison.

Much better contrasts in the re-jig :)

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SteveL

SteveL

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As it had a mis-behaved merdian flip in the middle, its a crop of the section that has all the data in it (if you see what I mean).

With the forecast looking so bad, maybe I need to look for an H2O filter instead...

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