First attempt on this target. Used Astrotortilla/PicGoto to find, but had a terrible time initially. I suspect either a bad plate solve (unlikely) or that the software didn't properly recognize the "invert" checkbox in PicGoto so the gotos were in the wrong direction until I explicitly unchecked and checked the box. So it took me a while to find this target, because I didn't know how bright the nebulosity was going to be and so took some 600 s subframes while hunting for it. Finally got everything sorted and found it easily; it's easily visible in Hα at 20 s, and if you know it's there, in only 3 s (so it's plenty bright enough). Very cold again (-8.5 to -11.5 °C on the CCD), enough so that it is making the grease in the mount pretty viscous. Imaged up to the meridian while watching my least favorite football team lose in the playoffs, then performed a flip and easily reacquired, realigned, and imaged until the neighbors' trees got in the way. This really does look like a monkey's head in profile; "Planet of the Apes" in the sky! I could have imaged it with the AT8IN, but didn't for 2 reasons: I already had the ST80 set up and I'm lazy, and I thought the framing might be better with the ST80 because it allows some space to show around the nebula. I'll need to wait for the Moon to go away and try for some RGB to mix in.
Date: 1 Jan 2015
Subject: NGC 2174, Monkey Head Nebula
Scope: Orion ST80 + Antares 0.5x telereducer
Filter: Baader 7 nm Hα
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.4.1 (Win 7 ASCOM)
Camera: DSI IIc no cooling (-8.5 to -11.5 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.1, no dither
Exposure: 52x600 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, no flats, extract R, histogram match, square, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Develop 74.99%; HDR
ptimize; Deconvolute: 4.2 pix; Track 3.0 pix; Magic 1 pix. Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools Hα false color black sky; Astroframe.
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