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NGC 7293 Helix nebula, Piet Vanneste
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NGC 7293 Helix nebula

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 7293 Helix nebula, Piet Vanneste
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 7293 Helix nebula

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Description

During the first (moonless) week of october I traveled to Namibia to Hakos Astrofarm for 8 nights of astrophotography .
The astrofarm is located near Hakos mountains and some 15 km away from the Gamsberg plateau.
The closest town is Windhoek at 120km to the North East.
100 km to the West there is the Namib dessert stretching further West to the Atlantic coast and 200 km to the East there is the Kalahari dessert.
The only downsite of this area is occasional windy nights ( I had one)

Typically conditions are very dry and sunny , about 10-15 % humidity this time of the year.
On top of that the elevation of 1850 m and the lack of light pollution (bortle 1) , makes it ideal conditions for astrophotography .
At the site there is a nice Guest house , the occupation is mainly astrophotographers but occasionally some tourists. (hakos-astrofarm.com)
On the premises there is quite some astro facilities  , some of it being owned or rented by remote astrophotographers , but there is also a big German astro hub from IAS (ias-observatory.org)

For the occasion I took my Epsilon 130ED and my Ioptron GEM28EC mount

One of the first objects was the Helix nebula , quite short session of 1.5 hours with ASI 183MC , 

In total I recorded about 20 objects during those (7 usable) nights , of which two of them were 6 panel mosaics.
(so likely this is equivalent to the harvest of a full year here in Western Europe , whereby objects like LDN or IFN's are hardly possible here)

So lots of images to come

CS , Piet

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NGC 7293 Helix nebula, Piet Vanneste