NGC2244 The Rosette Nebula

This is a LiveStack direct from SharpCapPro with no additional editing.

Explore Scientific ED127mm APO with a 0.7 reducer/corrector giving a focal length of approx 672mm @ f5.25, Baader 7nm Ha filter, Bortle 8 skies.

My first two exposures were 3 minutes each and then I realized I could go a little deeper so I switched over to 5-minute exposures
After 96 minutes, this is how it turned out. No additional processing or cropping which is why you see the black border from where PHD2 was dithering between exposures.

IMAGE LINK: https://photos.smugmug​.com …i-fKx8vJd-X2.png&lb=1&s=A

Impressive capture!

Hard to imagine how far astro imaging has gone in just a few years. Seems only yesterday that we were glued to a tracking scope trying to keep a star between a pair of crosshairs “forever”. And then into a darkened bathroom, developing to see what we got (or didn’t).

Amazing stuff now!

Park Ranger wrote in post #19183006
Impressive capture!

Hard to imagine how far astro imaging has gone in just a few years. Seems only yesterday that we were glued to a tracking scope trying to keep a star between a pair of crosshairs “forever”. And then into a darkened bathroom, developing to see what we got (or didn’t).

Amazing stuff now!

Agreed. I've been around for a while too and can remember the days of hypering Tri-X B&W film out in my parent's shed. Keeping it refrigerated until used while freezing fingertips as you manually guided on an illuminated reticle eyepiece for minutes at a time only to find out on a 36 exposure roll you maybe got 2 or 3 decent exposures. Sadly, all of my images from those days were destroyed when our house at the time flooded. (New Orleans).
Now, I sit in the comfort of my office while the scope is in the backyard running on autopilot. And with a program like SharpCapPro, I can even let it do the processing in real time. Good times...

Yeah, lots of work, but sure was kinda magical to see an image coming up on the negative. Now that I think about it, kinda magical now to see an image coming in on the iPad!

Sorry to hear about your loss from the flood!! I can feel your loss some as we lost everything in a wild fire in 2011. I miss not being able to rummage through those past photos and I’m sure you do as well. Thankfully we still have memories, and the good fortune to be able to make more.

Best

Another stunning image, particularly given there's no work done to it.

I only started this about 12 months ago so I've been spared the manual guiding and film development stage .. thankfully

xa-coupe wrote in post #19183236
Another stunning image, particularly given there's no work done to it.

I only started this about 12 months ago so I've been spared the manual guiding and film development stage .. thankfully

Count your blessings...
If you want to see what fun you missed out on, here's an article that explains the process of hypering film.
https://www.astropix.c​om …astrop/film/hyp​ering.html

SiriusDoggy wrote in post #19183530
Count your blessings...
If you want to see what fun you missed out on, here's an article that explains the process of hypering film.
https://www.astropix.c​om …astrop/film/hyp​ering.html

That is intense ... what really surprises me is that someone actually figured it out to begin with!