The Session-Story of the Horsehead Nebula
Permanently clouds, and then? Clear sky at full moon! I did not want to ignore the possibility to get a new picture and went for the Horsehead Nebula.
Pleiades
At the early evenings, i did some exposures of the Pleiades for about 2 hours until the Horsehead Nebula rised over the house of my neighbour.
Horsehead Nebula
After Pleiades, i took photos of the Horsehead Nebula on both days for about 2 to 2,5 hours on each of them.
On both days, dew and frost came while i was exposing the nebula. It all went really well, beside the fact, dass dew and frost on the guide scope ended my exposure time a bit after midnight on the first day. After that, i ordred a heatband for the guidescope for the next sessions.
Same data – advanced processing
Lessons Learned
The most important thing i have learned is, that it is absolutely senseless to shoot Pleiades or any other “RBG” target at full moon. The material is truely only usefull to get thrown away. I think Pleiades will be my next target.
One thing that worked pretty well was the switch between the two filters. Before i switched to the L-Extreme, I refocused with the UV/IR Cut. Due to the fact that both filters are homofocal, the focus worked pretty well.
The post processing was all done in Affinity Photo. I really like the result. It is a little bit pity, that the small hole of clouds on the 3rd day was really tiny. I would have loved to add some RGB stars to the picture. Since i worked again on the flattener config after christmas, there will be no rgb on that picture and I declared it as finished. Then next year again …
High resolution on Flickr:
Session details
| Telescope | VIXEN ED80sf |
|---|---|
| Corrector | TSFlat2 |
| Effective focal length | 600 mm |
| Camera | Canon EOS M100(a) |
| Mount | Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro |
| Guiding equipment | TS-Optics 50 |
| Guiding camera | Omegon 1200b |
| Date of capture | 2021-12-20 2021-12-21 |
| Nights | 2 |
| Exposure (lights) | 45 × 180 s |
| Total integration | 2 h 15 min |
| Calibration frames | FLATS, BIAS |
| Sensitivity | ISO 1600 |
| Capture setup | Ubuntu, EKOS/INDI, PHD2 |
| Processing | 2021-12-23 – Affinity Photo |
| Reprocessing | 2023-12-21 – PixInsight, Affinity Photo |
| Location | Koblenz, Rheinland |
| Focal ratio | f/7,5 |
| Image scale | 1,28 ″/px |
| Field of view | 128,0 × 85,3 ′ |
