[AZ-Observing] Re: New Camera First Light - NGC 6888 Narrowband
- From: "Bernard Miller" <bgmiller011@xxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 18:22:06 -0700
Mike,
Very nice. I like the OIII around the nebula. I am not sure what happened to
the color in the crescent. They seem washed out on my monitor. I don't have
a lot of narrowband experience but you might try playing with the Ha/OIII
split.
Bernard
-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Wiles
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 7:56 PM
To: AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; sbig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] New Camera First Light - NGC 6888 Narrowband
Hello all,
After waiting patiently for the bad weather that was delivered with my
camera to subside - including being physically rained on 17 days in a row
between working in Pittsburgh and the Arizona monsoon, I was finally able to
knock out a first light image. I was excited about the prospect of
narrowband imaging because the bandpass on the filters is so narrow (3
nanometers in my case) that the skyglow from light pollution and the moon
become negligible. About half of the frames in this image were taken
pointed back toward the Phoenix nebula with no visible affect on the
background that I could see.
The new camera setup is heavy at 4.5 pounds so I opted to go with a fully
threaded connection from telescope to camera in the hopes that I could get
away without using a field flattener. A look at the corners of the image
tell me that I'm not going to get that lucky. Imaging in temperatures that
varied from 102º down to 87º didn't help with cooling the camera either, but
I'm happy with the output. This is a bi-color image. I shot through two
filters - Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen III. Once I calibrated and stacked the
images I combined the HAlpha and OIII files at a 25/75% split to create a
synthetic green channel. Mapping HAlpha to Red and OIII to blue, I combined
and processed as a normal RGB. I've also been experimenting with some
scripting of my own as well as testing on CCDWare's excellent CCD AutoPilot
5 software....the last 6 hours of the data collection was entirely
automated. I may get to actually start looking through a telescope again
while I image!!
The full sized, uncropped field can be seen at Astrobin - NGC 6888
Bi-color<http://www.astrobin.com/full/16771/?mod=none>
If you have difficulty with the link, try here: NGC 6888 - smaller Direct
Link<http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/539115_4285947474180_6987230
27_n.jpg>
*Object: *NGC 6888 (Crescent Nebula)
*Dates:* Aug 2nd to 5th, 2012
*Location:* Goodyear, AZ - 35mi (56 km) Southwest of Phoenix, Arizona
*Telescope:* Explore Scientific ES127CF Refractor - 127mm f/7.5 Triplet
*Mount:* Astro-Physics AP900GTO CP3
*Camera:* SBIG ST-8300m
*Guiding:* SBIG OAG-8300 & SBIG ST-i
*Exposure:* 16.5 hours total
- H-Alpha - 17 frames x 1800 seconds
- Oxygen III - 16 frames x 1800s
*Capture:* Maxim DL 5.18 & CCD AutoPilot *All Calibration & Processing:*
PixInsight 1.7
Hope you enjoy. Comments, tips and criticisms are welcomed.
Mike
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