Horsehead Nebula in Hydrogen Alpha
11-Nov-2015
I decided to take advantage of the only clear night for over a week to play with some new toys: an Astronomik 6nm Hα filter, and a Starlight Xpress adaptive optics unit. After learning how to calibrate and use the AO, I settled on the Horsehead Nebula as my target.
Image:
- 18x 360s Hα 6nm bin2x2 + 7 flat + 40x dark + 120x bias
Total integration 1 hour 48 minutes.
Hardware:
- Celestron EdgeHD 1100 with CGEM DX mount
- Celestron 0.7x EdgeHD focal reducer
- QSI 683-wsg Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik Hα 6nm filter
- Orion StarShoot Autoguider
- Starlight Xpress Adaptive Optics
Location:
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
- Average-good seeing + new moon phase.
Software:
- Captured with AstroArt 5
- Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
- CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack.
- Astra Image 4.0: Deconvolution
- Photoshop CC: Levels, selective noise reduction, shrink stars, high pass filter, hue/saturation, shadows/highlights, contrast