Orion Widefield on Christmas Day

[SteveL]

Finally, after 95 days without a image, I get the best present ever from Santa... a clear sky! OK, the moon was 60% illuminated, and the sky conditions werent great (quite noisy), but it was clear and I could see stars... and so I was out!

This was taken with my QHY8 piggybacked on the top of my rig while I was imaging something else (might get to post that a bit later). 20 x 300s, IDAS filter, some dark spots in the center due to dew spot on the nosepiece glass, but if I drop the black point to remove it, the image loses a lot of the fainter stuff.

A subtle hint of rosette can JUST be seen, more prominant in the larger version.

(Click on Image for larger version)

[skye at night]

Nice..

and at least you have reset your counter!!!

The rosette is fairly obvious on my mac screen...

Steve

[ashenlight]

Lovely job Steve Rosette is definitely there for me too - subtley pink-ish hue with obvious centre stars. great work

[Beyond_Vision]

Nice one Steve, a hint of Barnards Loop on my monitor

Regards

Kevin

[daz]

That's a nice little taster mate!!!

95 days - I hadn't realised it was THAT long!

[LukeSkywatcher]

Great image. Yep the Rossette is there for me too. Oh look there is the Horsehead also.

[Euan]

Great result Steve. I'm quite tempted to do the same and piggyback a DSLR onto my setup, the more imaging we can squeeze into one night the better!!

Have you got a dew heater on the QHY8 nosepiece? I get the same effect if I don't run one.

Even worse than that I've just been trying to dry mine out in the house, the CCD keeps getting covered in ice as soon as I put the cooling on

[SteveL]

With the filter drawer and the Nikon Adaper and the lens, there is no room to get a dew heater on the nosepiece itself, and back focus on the system is so tight that I cannot use the heated nosepiece thingy that QHY are now supplying (havent seen any reviews of that yet)

I run my QHY8 TEC via a maplins adjustable voltage supply, had to drop the voltage down 6.5v to stop the dew spot growing. Any lower and the fan doesnt spin It must have been a really humid/damp night, as I got a dew spot on the M25C nosepiece too, and that has NEVER happened to me before.

[Jupiter Martin]

Nice one Steve