Thor's Helmet

[wsuriano]

Here's what I got between the peak of my house and a large pine tree.  It could use more data, but I probably won't get any more this season.  This is 10 five minute subs of Ha and the same of OIII.  This was imaged with a Meade DSI II Pro on a Meade 5000 80mm APO on a CGEM guided with a Meade DSI Pro on an Orion ST80.

Bill

[Tony]

Great shot, thanks for sharing the details... I too have a 2 story house and large Sycamore tree limiting my aperture to the sky and have had to combine nights to assemble enough data. I also have settled on a CGEM and just love it! good combination!

[DSOMAN]

Nicely done.

Sounds like you need a chainsaw filter, for the tree anyway.

Brent

[wsuriano]

Brent, I wish I could, but it's the neighbor's tree.  I do need more data on this one.  I'm going to try to reshoot it with a different set up.  I should have removed the .8 FR/flattener and imaged without.  It's the difference between a resolution of 4.46" per pixel and a more manageable 3.57" per pixel.  I may even use a different scope.  Big plans, no time!

Tony, I like the CGEM a lot too.  Five minute guided subs are pretty easy now.  I may even try some 10 minute subs in narrowband.  I live in the Chicago light cone so I can only do about 90 second subs in LRGB.  But, in narrowband, I can go a lot deeper.

Bill

[Tony]

Living in a similar light environment in the Los Angeles Mertopolitan Basin, I have resorted to several light pollution filters on my QHY8 color camera. The Orion, Astronomik and lumicon all had a strong color shift and absorbed a lot of light. I found an IDAS light supression filter from Starizona to be the best. It seems to be much more transparent, but does allow me on new moon nights to take up to 20 minute subs. Images straing fromt eh camera do exhibit a light pollution color shift, but can be corrected in Nebulosity to nerly neutral. I have far from mastered subs of that length form guiding and flexure problems, but have succeeded in getting processable images that hold the promise of improving as I go through eliminating the minor guiding and flex in my set up. I have been using the Orion Easy Star Finder accessory to move my guide camera around on the filed of view of my 66mm guide scope, and at times believe I have allowed it to become "sloppy" introducing flex shifts to my images as evidenced by a little line of hot pixels I can spot.

Out of about 12 frames I have gotten 4 that are nearly perfect and the balance have oblong stars... But in 10 to 12 minute subs its almost there.

Keep up the great work we enjoy seeing your results!

[MtnGoat]

Hey, I did one of that with similar conditions..I get about 50 minutes from one tree to the next at that declination. 48 one minute subs, SN8/LXD75/DSI-C

[firemouth]

Wow great comparison image! I looked at it several times and then the first image from Bill. It took me a second to align the stars and see that it was 90° off in position between the 2 images. LOL

Images are fantastic and show great detail! My goal to get imaging one day is to try and image exactly what you see in B/W in the eyepiece. I think there is a lot of people who see images from different brands of scopes and apertures and think that the beautiful image is what they will see when they buy the scope.

I really like this image Bill. I envy your talent!