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Friday, December 18, 2009

NGC 281, the "Pac-Man Nebula"





This image has coused a lots of trouble to me. At one point I was thinking what's the point of doing this!
Let's face it, my equipments are a big pile of crap. Everything is faling a parts and I'm spending more time to fixing things than actually imaging.
It's not a picnic to spend two hours outside and soldering when it's very windy and temperature drops to -26 celsius. (-15F). I really need better instruments if I'm going to continue this "hobby" (read addiction) now everything is put to gether from self made solutions and cheapest possible parts.
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Ok, here is a image after all, not a perfect one though. I started this project at the end of the last month and I collected last photons 16.12. I collected 42 x 1200s of H-alpha light, that's a 14 hours.
Due the technical problems I was able to use only 6 x 1200s, Two hours, of them!
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Images are in my Portfolio with less compression, Please, have a look HERE.
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Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack.
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 30 iterations.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.
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Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f4.65
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO @ 11Hz
Image Scale, 0,8 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures:
H-alpha 6x1200s Binned 1x1
O-III 3x600s, binned 3x3
S-II 4x1200s, binned 1x31

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