| Object | Alnitak, Flame and Horsehead Nebulae |
| Date | February 25, 2006 |
| Instrument | Astelle built-in finder w/focal reducer (~150mm f.l. f/7) |
| Guiding | Unguided |
| Exposure | lum= 40 minutes, red filter, 60 second subs, dark subtracted, no flats. GB= 5 min. each, dark subtracted, no flats. |
| Camera | Meade DSI Pro |
| Processing | Luminosity, median combined 40 red-filtered images in Envisage. Levels, curves, gradient removal, hi-pass sharpening in Photoshop. RGB, median combine in Envisage. Levels, color balance, saturation, gausian blur in Photoshop. Noise reduction in Neat Image. |
| Comments | I started this one with intentions of using the 4" M/N, but the wind was so strong that I couldn't get good star images. I switched to the finder by rotating the secondary mirror (cool feature of this scope!) and found that not only was I able to get good star images in the wind, but I liked the field of view better! This is encouraging, because I just ordered an SLR camera lens adapter from Steve Mogg so I could start working with shorter focal lengths. |