Flaming Star Nebula

[paulgrover68]

I've mostly just been lurking in recent weeks. The lack of clear skies was becoming depressing.

Last night I had the first clear sky of 2021.  I'm going to be honest I wasn't ready. It was very windy, I rushed the setup and didn't plan anything.  My original target was going to be the witchhead nebula, but with limited time and a moon I thought it wise to stick to something I could hit with the L-eNhance.

 

As a result the framing is an abmomination and overall it's really not my finest hour. I do want to reprocess because I think I've inadvertantly clipped the blacks a little.

That said after pretty awful skies for so long, I'm just grateful to post anything... I was seriously considering sharing pictures of the cat.

 

 

[TerryMcK]

It looks pretty good to me Paul.

[Gina]

I quite agree.  Very nice.  What do you think is wrong with the framing.  I would say it's spot on for the FoV you have there.  You've got virtually all the nebulosity in the Flaming Star and Tadpoles in the frame.  No, Paul, I have to disagree with you!!  I love the framing!  Congratulations on capturing a nice image in this atrocious run of weather.  👍👍👍

[paulgrover68]

Thanks - I think what messed with on this one was in pre-crop everything was pushed toward top left and I'd spent ages juggling in stellarium to go more central!

 

I'm going through a bit of an overly self critical phase, especially on new targets.

 

[TerryMcK]

I’m not sure if you are using plate solving yet but I find the best way to frame an object like this, assuming you have the camera rotation matching the FOV in Stellarium, is to decide on the shot you want in Stellarium moving the view left, right, up, down etc.

Once you have the desired view choose a convenient star or object in the centre of the FOV. Note the coordinates. Then put them into your Astro capture software and set it to platesolve based upon those coordinates. You can then guarantee that what you get is what you chose in Stellarium.
I use Astroberry/Kstars/EKOS on a Raspberry PI4 as the observatory software and internally I have set it to use ASTAP as the platesolver in conjunction with its magnitude 17 database. It is extremely reliable, quick and accurate.

[peter shah]

a super rendition Paul and pretty deep

[MarkAR]

Looks really good to me, well done.

[paulgrover68]

On 2/21/2021 at 7:33 AM, TerryMcK said:

I’m not sure if you are using plate solving yet but I find the best way to frame an object like this, assuming you have the camera rotation matching the FOV in Stellarium, is to decide on the shot you want in Stellarium moving the view left, right, up, down etc.

Once you have the desired view choose a convenient star or object in the centre of the FOV. Note the coordinates. Then put them into your Astro capture software and set it to platesolve based upon those coordinates. You can then guarantee that what you get is what you chose in Stellarium.
I use Astroberry/Kstars/EKOS on a Raspberry PI4 as the observatory software and internally I have set it to use ASTAP as the platesolver in conjunction with its magnitude 17 database. It is extremely reliable, quick and accurate.

I plate solve in then use stellarium as described. It's a game changer for sure. When I was shooting this I was darting backward and forward between APT an stellarium.  I think I was getting so cold I cut some corners!