M17 - The Swan Nebula

[Sam]

This very colourful and bright nebula sits about 5000 light years away in the congested star fields of Sagitarius. From my place this area is extraordinarily bright and dominates the night sky as a very bright patch - the whole milky way at this time of the year is just brilliant with it stretching from horizon to horizon. Just before dawn Pleiades (or Matariki as it's called down here) sits just above the horizon and Orion's belt is just starting to come up at dawn.

This time of year is also in the depths of winter in our valley and last night was no excpetion with a frost starting to build as I was putting things away - there was a nice layer of frost on the telescope (and even the mouse pad for the laptop had a nice layer). The mountains to our west (the Tararuas) are all snow capped and the air is clear, to the east there's nothing - in fact there's no settlement until Chile. The sun sets a little before 6:00pm with it being nice and dark by 7:00pm. I had everything set up and drift aligned by about 8:00pm and started capturing data by 8:15pm.

My gear for this snap:

Skywatcher 250px

EQ6 Syntrek with EQMOD running it

Skywatcher ST80 guidescope

QYH5 guide camera

Canon 1000D modded with the filter removed

Guidemaster was used to drift align

PHD guiding was used for guiding

Cdc was used to find the right part of the sky

DSS was used to stack all of the images

PixInsight 1.6 was used for the processing

A doberman and a flat coated retriever for company

Sam:)

[Doug]

Sam

This is a fantastic picture love to see more , well done I would love to have your sky, to much light from motorways here

Doug

Essex England

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LX90 ACF 8"

Nagler T4 eyepieces 12 & 17mm

Moonfish eyepiece 30mm

filters

power tank

binoculars 8x16x40

Carl ziess 10x50

Reverlation 20x80

Oberwerk 10x60 mariner

Opticron 15x80

[Sam]

Thanks Doug. I forget to note that the image is from 24 X 360sec exposures shot at ISO400 - a total of 2hrs 24mins.

[johnh]

Excellent result, stars nice and round everywhere. Good contrast in the surrounding nebulosity - 1000D seems to pick it up well.

John.

[omega3]

Sam, that's a stunning image with a newtonian. I have the same scope on a dobsonian mount. It must be a challenge on an equatorial mount. Your description of the gear for the image is really helpful to appreciate what you had to do. It would would be great if others would follow your format. Looking forward to your next effort.

Alan

[Sam]

Thanks Alan and John,

Alan, the tube fits quite nicely on the EQ6 Syntrek, with the huge tube rings! the weight isn't a problem as long as it's not too windy. The 250px tube is shorter than the 8" that was my previous imaging scope so the new one catches less wind. It uses 4 of the weights!

Sam

[anthony]

That's a lovely image.

Anthony

[russ]

Super image! Some awesome detail in there.

[Beyond_Vision]

I see you are really taking advantage of those southern skies Sam. A really cracking image with some really nice detail and colour tones.

Regards

Kevin

[Sam]

Thanks Ant, Russ and Kevin:)

[ollypenrice]

Great swan with lovely billowing clouds.

Olly

[steppenwolf]

That's lovely, Sam - such great colours!

[RichieJarvis]

Lovely Sam - great to see these images from the Southern sky - makes me dead jealous!

How are you settling in back home now?

Cheers,

Richie

[Sam]

Well and truely settled back in, though still have about 50 boxes to unpack. Thanks for the comments Steve, Olly and Richie.

[SkyHermit]

Another great image, that part of the sky is so gorgeous. And I'm assuming the two dogs were to keep the horse away

[Sam]

The dogs aren't much good at that - but they're good for company.