Heart Nebula (IC 1805)

[Johnny9s]

Imaged this last night as well. My focus was a little off as well. I now know that I should really concentrate on a single image for the night to get more light frames. This is a work in progress.

I can't wait for processing to come more naturally. I seem to forget each time I start to process an image where I started last time.:confused:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3182/2901433800_b20e68f9bc_o.jpg

I'm off to bed finally!!

John

[Nighthound]

Nice work once again John. It'll take between 3 and 5 hours of exposure to get this one to really pop. It's a real beauty.

[Jim G]

Darned cool...

[Johnny9s]

Thanks. This was 18x120sec exposures. Can I just go back out and take more photos and add them to my stack or do they have to be taken on the same day?

[Nighthound]

No problem. That's the nice thing about shooting nebulae suspended deep in space, they'll always be right how ya left 'em. :D

As long as you shoot using the same gear, no problem at all. The difficulty lies in framing the shot very close each session. That way you won't be cropping so much away from the outer edges of your stack. It's hardest to achieve this on objects as dim as The Heart Nebula but if you have a sketch of the position of the first nights exposures then by shooting a few test frames and making adjustments you'll get it very close. You can even add more exposures next year to add to this recent batch. This is actually good practice for when you have to make a meridian flip. If the object is rising and you are shooting it at some point your mount will not be able to go any further without swinging it around to start tracking the object as it begins on its setting course. That means you'll have to frame the shot again like it was when the object was rising.

*Keep in mind that many thousands of years from now the exposures taken then might vary from this years. :)