CCD vs Film? Lots of time vs no patience? Alright, this is your place to discuss all the astrophotography what's and what's not. You can discuss about techniques, accessories, cameras, whatever....just make sure you also post some nice photos here too!
I thought that I will missed this target again this year as the window to image it is closing. A stark contrast to it's bright neighbour M42, it is really dim. Got a hard time to extract as much details as I could with the limited data that I had collected, and I am still prone to over stretched the image. This would have been a futile attempt, if not with the help of H-alpha filter. To curb the noise issue with long exposures, I had to employ the custom made chill jacket to cool the dslr camera again. All in all, I managed to collect 5x8minutes of H-alpha subs and 16x2minutes of colour images. The imaging ota is Tak Baby Q.
Here is a stack of 5 eight minutes sub wiht H-alpha filter, the way the camera 'see' it.
[80% Steve, 20% Alfred] ------- Probability of Clear Skies = (Age of newest equipment in days) / [(Number of observers) * (Total Aperture of all telescopes present in mm)]
By the way, did you see the horsey in normal colour image??
Hi Weixing, the horsehead is visible but very faint in colour mode. Below is the stacked and stretched colour image. Extraneous artificial light was being cut out with IDAS filter, but the Horsehead's surface brightness is only a fraction of magnitude above the sky background. Without the help of H-alpha filter, the imaging time have to be 3 or 4 times longer to achieve the seme result.
Hi Andrew, only Ha was used as narrowband image. It was employed as luminence data to enhance the colour image. I had reprocessed the image again, trying to enhance the colours, the flame nebula looks more flame like now.........but I may had pushed it too much, an apparent lack of sufficient image data.....