Crescent Nebula - Digital Rebel..

[Jake]

After a long hiatus of bad weather (8 months) which always seemed to fall on new moon, I finally had a good night and dusted off the imaging gear again. 

It took me a bit to remember how to run the autoguider, since it has been so long, but I did get it up and running.  The only downfall is that by then, the wind had picked up substantially, and was giving the autoguider a run for it's money.  This is only a four shot stack, so not as good as it could be, but I just wanted to see how much signal I could get out of this object using the unmodified version of the digital rebel - I think it is not bad considering it is unmodified. 

This is only 4 images stacked, 10mins each exposure.  ISO=1600.



-Jake

[ricksastro]

Jake,

That's better than "not bad"...that's a great image!  To capture the Ha detail you did with an unmodofoed rebel is nothing short of incredible.  Your processing looks prefect to me...I tend to like the lighter backgrounds and nice, gaussian shaped stars.   Not overdone at all!

You could get rid of the satellite trail by using Sigma combine if you'd like, but it doesn't bother me at all...

Great work!

Rick

[Ron]

 

Fantastic Jake

Fourty minutes of imaging, WOW!  Nice stars, detail, and putting it all together.

Where were you when you took the images?

I see there is still hope for my 300D. 

Nice to see you back in business, hopefully to make up for the lost time.

Ron

[sc02492]

Jake, very nice!  This is actually a tough object, and with only 40 minutes you've done a great job bringing out color and detail.

Steve

[Jake]

Wow, thanks guys - I guess it is better than I thought.!

I actually didn't expect to have much of an image at all, and was mainly using this as a
test set of exposures just to see how the camera would do on such a faint Ha object. 
I would still like to go back and try this one again.   

I am still suprised at how well the mount/autoguider did since wind gusts were buffeting
the scope pretty good, and I would see the correction numbers jump - but the autoguider
kept on going - it was pretty neat. 

I am still tempted to adjust the histogram to darken the background a little more - I might post a slight
reprocess and see what everyone thinks - I generally have a tendency to overdo that, so I need to be careful.

Ron -

I shot this at my local dark sky site, Mt. Pinos.  Don't give up on your DR - there is plenty of hope for it.
It makes a dandy astro camera, and is capable of capturing many deep sky objects.  Just remember that on
faint Ha objects such as this, it will not do as well as a dedicated astro CCD.  It does much better on galaxies,
clusters, and brighter nebula.  I hope to see some deep sky shots from you soon!

-Jake