Conditions not quite as good tonight as the last few nights: a bit of gusty wind and some high clouds. I had a lot of problems with camera download hangs again tonight, despite having two hubs and the imaging camera on a hub and cable by itself. That said, my new EQ6 mount combined with Sequence Generator Pro continues to impress, withstanding the wind gusts and making finding and aligning shots easy due to the plate solving capability. Thor’s helmet is a relatively tough target because it is pretty far south so I don’t get a lot of time above the horizon, but it is also a favorite of mine because it’s such an interesting object. Wolf-Rayet stars do beautiful, if violent things, although I guess this is nothing compared with what it is thought they are about to do next!

I might have done 900 sec subs (I actually started trying that), but the sky background looked bad so I backed off, only to realize that I’d left a porch light on; that was the reason the background was so bad. By that point I just stuck with 600 sec. Nebulosity stacking left the nebula quite green, whereas Deep Sky Stacker made it more bluish. I think the Nebulosity version looks better.

In revision B, I stacked with Deep Sky Stacker with drizzle off and left out the two worst subframes. I applied more noise reduction and brought up the black point a bit in Photoshop. I think this produced better color and more contrast.

Date: 26 Feb 2016

Subject: NGC 2359, Thor’s Helmet (Duck Nebula)

Scope: AT8IN

Filter: Baader Planetarium UHC-S

Mount: EQ-6 (EQMOD)

Guiding: Orion ST-80 + Antares 0.5x focal reducer + DSI Ic + PHD 2.6.1.1 (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc, no chiller CCD 1-2 °C

Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 2.4.3.25 with Nebulosity 4.0.4 ASCOM camera driver

Exposure: 18x600 s

Stacking: Neb 4, bad pixel map, bias included, 32 flats, CMYG nebula filter, match histograms, trans+rot align, Nebulosity 40-60tile stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.4.305: Crop; Wipe; Develop: 78.89%; HDRptimize; Color:Scientific, 150% saturation; Deconvolute: 2.7 pix; Track: Smoothness 87%, 4.5 pix; Magic, shrink 1 pix. Photoshop CS6 + Astronomy Tools: Deep space noise reduction; Make stars smaller; Increase star color; Astroframe.