Yes, I know I have been a bit slack lately with very little imaging of the last 6 – 9 months but this has been compounded by a variety of issues with work, COVID, weather and just general life. But it has finally been time to get back into the imaging and as it is Milky Way season I figured it was finally time to capture M17 – The Swan.
Imaged using the QHY268M attached to the RC10 mounted on the EQ8 in the dome, this is in the HOO pallet and as close up as I am likely to get as there is very minimal cropping in this image, just done to clean up the edges after alignment. I would like to expand this with masaicing the area to get more of the nebulosity to the right of the image, as well as increasing the O3 frame count, and possibly even going to an SHO pallet. – lets see if the weather is going to cooperate.
While commonly called the Swan, it appears to have a bit of a dragon face to me. The above is a reduced size jpg for display, the full size 4063 x 6098 image can be seen HERE.
Image Details :
RA = 18h 20m 47s
Dec = -16o 09′ 52″
Equipment Used :
10″ RC at native f8 (2000mm focal length)
EQ8 mount
QHY268m at -10C, 56 gain & 2×2 binning ( 0.78 arcsec/pix)
Antlia Ha & Oiii 3.5nm filters in a QHY efw
Guided using QHY5 guide camera in a QHY OAG
Power is managed by a PegasusAstro Ultimate Power Box v2 with a mounted NUC minicomputer controlling everything,
Image Components
21x600s Ha
12x600s Oiii
100 darks
100 bias
Software :
SGPro, PHD2, Pixinsight, Photoshop
