NGC 7293, better known as the Helix Nebula, Caldwell 63 and in pop culture as "The Eye of God" or the "Eye of Sauron" - is a planetary nebula located in 655 light years away in the Constellation Aquarius. Planetary Nebulae are formed when an intermediate to low-mass star sheds its outer layers as it reaches the end of its life. The Helix Nebula is one of the closest planetaries to the Earth, is estimated to be about 2.5 light years in diameter.

I've always liked the Helix Nebula but it's not a very attractive target for me as it is due south and very low in the sky. This raises two issues.

First, I have a lot of trees on my property and I can only see low in the south if I look down the tree tunnel formed by my driveway. At best, I have maybe an hour and half or so to shoot it as it emerges from the trees on one side of the driveway and before it sets in the trees on the other side of my driveway.

Secondly, it is very low for me, about 26 degrees of elevation when it transits. It basically sits right over the roof of my neighbor's house for most of its exposure time.

So what's not to love? Short access window, low elevation, looking through the maximum amount of atmosphere possible, thermal currents from the neighbor's roof…So shooting this is kind of a joke right?

On the other hand, this target does seems to bound the far side of the "goodness" continuum - I wonder what I could up with? Sounds like a bit of a challenge….

So last night is one of the few partially clear nights that we have had recently, so I went for it.

This image is the result of 42x150 seconds subs. Seeing was terrible and the guiding was less than optimal as well. My autofocus routine seemed to fail about half the time (normally it never fails) and I really needed way more subs to manage the noise better. I had a lot of work to do to try and pull an image out and this is what I ended up with. Looking on the bright side, all my future efforts should be easier and produce better results than what I just got - right?

Here are the details for the image:

42 x 150 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C

50 Bias exposures

25 Dark exposures

50 Flats

Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO

Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2

Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, and much swearing…..