Hey all! Took another stab at capturing The Horsehead Nebula (B33/ IC 434) The Flame Nebula (NGC 2024.) Still a bit too east (lower left) for my light pollution. Specs and capture info is below:
• ZWO ASI2600MC PRO camera
• William Optics RedCat 71 telescope
• ZWO ASIAIR Plus
• Sky Watcher HEQ5 mount
•Image captured using sixty 90 second subs, with no filters, dark, flat, or bias frames (got lazy.)
• Image stacked in the ASI deep sky stacker app and light/color edits in Photoshop. This is my first attempt at capturing it with my RedCat, let me know what you think!
by dsm2xtreme
3 Comments
Good try but lower your sub lengths with Alnitak there. Also, take flats and try Siril for stacking and processing.
Nice capture for just 90 minutes!
FYI, with a dedicated cooled astrophotography camera, you only need to take one set of darks (per exposure length you use) and bias images. These can then be reused for many months before you may want to take a new set.
For example, I took my bias frames and 300 second dark frames at -15°C cooling in September and am using them until ~March when I’ll retake them to make sure nothing significant has changed since last taking them. I was able to do this inside during the day by placing my set-up in a dark room and just let it run via the ASIAir automation for a while. It’s super easy to do that part at least, even if you don’t take flats before/during/after each session (which I personally also recommend).
Local skies are Bortle 4 big city skies about 30 miles back east (lower left) of the target.