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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Butterfly Nebula from bad night

Sometimes there is days (nights), when everything goes wrong.
Last night was one of them.
First I had problems with my laptop and I had to reboot it several times.
It's a old well served Dell and booting it up takes for ever.
Then one of the cord to telescope was damaged and it took about an hour to
figure it out. After that I was ready so start my narrowband imaging session with
three filters.
First I selected H-alpha filter and got everything ready for imaging.
Guider was working fine and I started recording. I went out and stepped on the main power cord. Total blackout to the telescope. Huh... After an hour I got all on and running again (reinstalling couple of drivers etc...)
There was no more time for all three bands anymore, so H-alpha was now my goal.
After 7 x 1200s (20 min.) exposure they all looked good.
BUT BUT... when I examined them more closely and extracted red pixels from RAW-images
(thats how it works with one shot clor camera), I notised DEW, all but firs image was contaminated by dew.
There is a heater for my filter drawer to prevent dewing and cord from the power unit
was damaged! I soldered it back together but there was not enough night left for anything.
I shot flat frames just to be sure, and went to sleep for two hours before work.
Image here is a one twenty minutes exposure!
Camera, QHY8
Filter, Baader 7nm H-alpha
Optics, Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8
Exposure, 1 X 1200s + flats and bias
Guiding, LX200 GPS 12" + PHD-guiding and Lodestar

2 comments:

Geraldo Maia said...

Hello J-P Metsävainio,
Blogisi on hyvin kaunis. Pidin siitä.
Terveisin Brasiliasta:
Geraldo

J-P Metsavainio said...

Thanks a lot Geraldo!
Do you speak finish???

J-P