IC5146 in Ha

[Paramount]

Hi All
Last night was one of those nights when you want to tear your hair out, all the equipment is running smoothly, skies are clear (average seeing though) and the first subframes are downloading nicely and then after 2 subframes at 12.30am clouds blow in from the middle of nowhere and although they are moving fast there doesn't appear to be any break. Anyway I decided to stay out in the hope that it would clear, eventually it did at 2am so I recalibrated the autoguider and restarted and managed to get another 4 subframes in before more clouds and approaching daylight put a final stop on proceedings. Hopefully I will get the chance to add some more Ha data and colour to this a bit later. For comparison there are two previous attempts at this subject that I took last year, one in Ha and one in colour with different scope/camera combinations on the Nebulae page of the image gallery on my website http://www.imagingtheheavens.co.uk
Takahashi BRC-250
Starlight Xpress H9
Astronomik 12nm Ha filter
Paramount ME autoguided with Starlight Xpress M8C
No calibration was done on the image ie no darks or flats
Thanks for looking
Best wishes
Gordon
PS By the way does anybody actually know where the middle of nowhere is?

[budguinn]

Hi Gordon.....sometimes it just takes persistence.
my evenings, when I do finally get a clear evening, are much the same.....it has been a pretty poor year, so far.

you still managed to eek out a lot of detail in this object...I don't remember you having an H9...is this new?...SXV or SXVF?

[Paramount]

Hi Bud
Thanks for the comments, the H9 is the SXVF version and I got it about 3 months ago so that I would have a camera suited to the smaller objects, I find that it is so good at handling dark current that I don't bother with dark frames with it and any hot pixels I remove with the clone stamp tool i Photoshop
Best wishes
Gordon

[budguinn]

thanks, Gordon....I didn't think I remembered you having one.
I never sold my H9C when I upgraded to the M25C's...just liked it so much. Well, I'm glad I didn't. I recently bought a mono chip for it, and it works very well on a couple of my scopes. I'm probably going to use it exclusively for lum or ha work.

[Bob_riggs]

Very nice, Gordon! Its good now and will be great when you get it fine tuned. Be sure and share it, and thanks!

[lknowlen]

Very beautiful.