Horsehead & Flame Nebulas

Here is my Horsehead shot from last night. It is nowhere near what I wanted but a big improvement from my last attempt last year. It's about 48 minutes of data but I was shooting for about two hours or so. The problem was that my guiding camera came into contact with my controller mount without me realizing it, and I couldn't figure out (for about 45 mins) why I was seeing error messages with my PHD guiding software. I thought it was software-based but realized too late that it wasn't! Oh well. I wanted to go out again tonight but there are some high level clouds loitering around the area.

• Imaging Scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
• Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000
• Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor
• Guiding Camera: Meade DSI-C
• Mount: Celestron CGEM
• Exposures: 4 * 12 minute lights
• ISO 400
• Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Post-Processing in GIMP (contrast, saturation and unsharp mask)

Flame and Horsehead Nebulas - First Attempt!

Ahh, autoguiding! I finally nailed it tonight, with a lot of help from a colleague here who is way ahead of the curve than I! I've had some issues working out communications between my laptop and my CGEM mount, but tonight I discovered I had a faulty serial to USB cable! So, when I resolved the issue I took some test shots of the Horsehead and Flame Nebulas. Quite chuffed with the results!!!

Image Details:

• 3 * 10 minute exposures
• Imaged with a Nikon D40 @ ISO400, with an AstroTelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
• Guided with a Meade DSI, with a William Optics 66mm Refractor
• All mounted on a Celestron CGEM
  
• Processed in Deep Sky Stacker
• SUBTRACT GUASSIAN BLUR LAYER in GIMP to reduce vignetting
  
• Noise reduction in Neat Image
  

I need to focus on flat frames for the ED80mm, and also need to shoot this from darker skies where the light pollution won't kill my long exposure light frames. Still, not half bad, eh? :-)