NGC 7293, Helix Nebula, 24 Aug 2012 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Aquarius (Aqr) · Contains: Helix Nebula · NGC 7293

NGC 7293, Helix Nebula, 24 Aug 2012

Found the Helix visually, which was barely doable in my scope. Had to go to between 10 and 30 s to see it in the cameras. I'm trying RA-only dithering. Chiller at 8.5 °C at start of run. Adjusted the weights to get much better guiding than on my earlier target tonight (M15). This turned out really nasty; dust bunnies on the sensor were really bad and were not completely removed by the flats (I wish I knew a way to adjust or scale the flat division to make it work better, but I really need to clean the camera). I needed more subframes and I think the smoke in the air was much worse than I’d thought it would be. I think the dithering worked OK but using 2 sigma standard deviation stacking counteracted the benefits. Fortunately I should have plenty more chances to try again.

Date: 24 Aug 2012

Subject: NGC 7293, Helix Nebula

Scope: AT8IN

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: Orion ST80 + 0.5x Antares telereducer + DSI Ic + PHD

Camera: DSI IIc (cooled at 2 A, 7.5 V, 8.5 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.0

Exposure: 22 x 300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 2.0 SD stack

Processing: Digital development, Keller stretch, power stretch; saturation boost, in Neb 3; CS6 2 layers. To one, Astronomy Tools color blotch, deep space, space noise reduction, layers to darken background, layer mask combine with an unaltered layer with Gaussian blur. Flatten and liberally use the healing brush to remove bad pixel trails and dust bunnies, star color enhance.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6597071
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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