Witch Head Nebula

[Astrobdlbug]

Well, Boxing Day turned out to be a wonderful sunny day and that was forecast to be a clear night until about midnight - so I put the OSC on the 90mm plus reducer and the IDAS D2 LP filter and waited. Sure enough clear night and about 9pm the witch Head is above the hedge. I used 120s subs and TBH when I looked at them they looked horrible despite the D2 filter and Mr. Musk's Starlinks were being very persistant , amost every frame for first hour had a trail.

Anyway got 2hrs, packed up, brough kit back inside as lots of rain was on the cards for following day.

Today with telescope back indoors I took flats/Dark_Flats/Darks and a set of Bias. Stuffed the whole lot into APP and actually got an image !!

Used APP light polution removal tool and then into PI where I used the image solver and I applied SPCC to the image and got pretty decent star colour, applied BlurXT, NoiseXT and GHS to stretch -not much else done to it.

Its a fairly rough and ready witch head but it is a reflection nebula and taken from my back garden with bortle 5/6 LP skies.

 Acquisition details

Dates:       26 Dec 2022
Frames:     64×120″(2h 8′)

 

Bryan

 

[MartinS]

Very nice Witches Head Bryan, was it the IDAS filter that created the star halos?

[Astrobdlbug]

11 hours ago, MartinS said:

was it the IDAS filter that created the star halos?

 Martin, yes I suspect it’s reflection between the filter and focal reducer.

I may try and reverse the filter orientation as I had the filter out of the 2” holder for a different configuration and may have put it back into holder with incorrect side facing telescope optics - I’ll give that a try and see if it makes any difference 

Bryan

 

 

[TerryMcK]

I have the same filter and essentially the male threaded side needs to be closest to the sensor to get the glass the right way around. I had to get a very expensive M48 male/male adapter to orient it the correct way as the reducer I was using at the time only had female threads on the sensor side. I even tried a ZWO 2” filter drawer but that leaked light so has been consigned to the bin.

[MartinS]

23 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

I had to get a very expensive M48 male/male adapter

 

That is the bane of this hobby, the more you venture into AP the larger your adapter set becomes. When I finally had a good selection of M64,M48 and T2 adapters, along came the M54 requirement with Pegasus rotators and QHY Camera/filterwheels. At least with QHY their camera’s come complete with a set of thread/spacers to achieve the 55mm sensor spacing pseudo standard. Fine until you employ flatteners and reducer elements that come with their own dedicated backspace to sensor requirements, then the fun and Bank account drain starts over.

For a month I was unable to use my 2 new Pegasus rotators, with optimum  positioning directly after the focuser, I could not find any M68 Male to M54 Male adapters in the U.K. In the end, the only source was Cyclops Optics and international post.

 

[TerryMcK]

LOL it’s not just me who finds this hobby mega expensive. The M48 adapter is a M48 threaded thin wall tube x 7mm long. Cost “33 of your British pounds + postage from Germany”.

[Greg M]

Nice shot Bryan. This is a target I have not yet attempted. Maybe 2023 will be my year.