Taming a 100% very bright Moon

[turfpit]

Last night I was at last treated to some clear skies. First up was M33. I ran a test exposure of 30x10s with an L filter on my Atik 314L+ camera. A single frame was washed out, even though the FOV was well away from the Moon. A change of plan and a switch to an Ha filter for the night.

fighting_the_Moon.JPG (116.75 KiB) Viewed 986 times

This was the result from a 10x450s Ha stack.

Ha_drizzle1x.jpg (850.26 KiB) Viewed 986 times

Next target was the Double Cluster. I captured this as a 2-panel mosaic with the intention of capturing the Ha areas outside the clusters. First PixInsight mosaic for me, built using PhotoMetricMosaic. The original is 4330x1888, scaled to 40% for the Forum.

Mosaic_scaled_40percent.jpg (968.46 KiB) Viewed 986 times

The last image was IC434, The Horsehead Nebula.

IC434_Ha-10x450s_scaled-50percent.jpg (787.5 KiB) Viewed 986 times

The 3 images were calibrated/integrated in PixInsight but no further processing has been carried out.
This lays the groundwork for some RGB captures of the 3 objects on the next suitable night (hopefully moon free).

Dave

[StarzSkies]

Great picture Dave!
One if the targets on my list.
Frank

[turfpit]

Thanks Frank.

Dave

[timh]

Ha seems a great option to get decent images under too-bright skies - there is usually something of interest to see and tbh I often like just casual EEA observing that way without really bothering always to capture stuff into a saved image.

[turfpit]

Tim

Ha implies long exposure therefore guiding required. I got caught out (once) when imaging too near the moon, the guider was swamped and kept losing guide stars. I try to keep 90° away from the moon now which seems to have provided results. When the full moon gets near the meridian it is time to sleep.

Dave