Cold, mostly clear night with a few clouds. I had not thought this target would be very good in Hα because it usually appears blue or bluish green in images I've seen, but after searching Astrobin I saw it does show up in Hα and decided to try it because the moon is full tonight. Synched on Sirius and found with the PicGoto; no issues. Tried to east-weight my mount but guiding in RA was pretty bad; removed some of the east weighting and it improved. Imaged up to the meridian and went out to do a flip, then realized the mount was not going to bump so I left it as it was. I can certainly see Thor’s helmet in this, and a duck with a little more imagination, but to me it looks more like a running Ms. PacMan with outstretched arms, running toward the top of the image.
The revision was drizzled with a 0.6 droplet size and a 2-fold upsample.
Date: 4 Mar 2015
Subject: NGC 2359, Thor’s Helmet (Duck Nebula)
Scope: Astrotech AT8IN+Antares 0.5x focal reducer
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 (about 0 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.3.2, no dither
Exposure: 25x600 s
Stacking: Neb 3.3.2, bad pixel map, bias included, no flats, extract R, histogram match, deBayer & square, trans+rot align, 40-60% median combine.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Wipe: 79%; Develop: 74.99%; HDR
ptimize; Deconvolute 3.0 pix; Life:Less=More; Track 3.0 pix; Magic:Shrink 1 pix; Repair:Warp. Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools Deep space noise reduction; Hα false color black space; Astroframe; Assemble animated GIF.
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