Flame

[MishMich]

This is not my best image to date, and it is by no means anywhere near as good as most of those I see here. But, having upgraded the HEQ5 with synscan, which has led to all sorts of problems, and had about two worthwhile sessions in the past month, this is all I've had to play with lately. It is one hour of 2 minute exposures at ISO 800 using an unguided HEQ5 (as you will see if you view the smaller stars at their actual pixel size). I had a lot of trouble getting much at all of the horsehad, and I was mainly trying to capture the flame. This must be the fifth or sixth attempt at processing this short session - and I found other frames I took at 60 seconds unusable (the camera slipped in the T-mount half way through), and the previous session was before the upgrade and lacked flats. This was really me testing out taking flats - I used a short fluorescent tube I used to use in the attic behind a photographic white levelling mask. Although the bright, almost full, moon was only creeping over the rooftops I still ended up with a dreadful glow at the top of the frame, which with the coma at the edges meant I had to crop about a third off the original. This is an unmodded EOS 1000D, but I think I have managed to squeeze the last drop of blood out of this session...