Sh2-115 and IFNs
I got an amazing weather this year in Sardegna. I shot three objects, this is the last one from this trip. I was surprised by the result and I only used the HaOIII filter.
After the two objects previously posted, while I was getting still great weather, I didn’t know what to catch … The software Kstars gave me a hint and I decided to shoot this object named Sh2-115 (while there are other objects in the shots, Sh2-116 for instance).
Then, I decided to shoot 300 shots of 60 seconds with the Askar D1 HaOIII filter. It was more exposure time per shot but I wanted to try despite my lack of guiding. Maybe the mount will be good enough ….
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Disgressing here : by the way, I finally found out why the guiding system was messing with my shooting camera … I initially thought that there was some power issue, but I was very wrong … as I’m a bit obsessed by getting the latest drivers for all of the equipments of my setup, and as I have two cameras from the same vendor, after the latest update of these drivers my shooting software N.I.N.A. have put my shooting camera as default for both shooting and guiding … and that’s the reason why I got this USB error during shooting … lesson learned : to check the camera used in the guiding software before trying anything else …
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Sadly, like for the two other objects, I had to discard almost half of my shots in total because of some “not that round” stars or plane trails..
I felt that I caught enough stars (too many …) ! I still have a problem with Deneb star, there is on the final picture a halo not centered on it, and I believe it could be a tilt issue from my camera. Surely, as I already said in my previous blog, I hope I will correct this on my next sessions for other objects. Indeed, I tried a software trick to delete this out-of-center halo, I almost got it but still had a faint circle from this exercise … best will be to try playing with the tilt screws on my camera.
Normally, I wanted to shoot also with the S2O3 filter, to catch more blue and orange/red but the result I got with these shots was enough to work on as the O3 from the D1 filter didn’t catch any blue in there anyway… and to be honest, I was excited by the IFNs, I never got these in any previous shots, I was a bit overwhelmed and decided to skip another night for additional data.
I spent hours on trying to get the right balance between stars and the IFNs (all the gases around the object), it was a tough job. Finally I got some help from the astronomy club : the “max” formula in PixelMath (I don’t want to write lines on this, it is a feature to combine shots together, in this case the stars caught with the nebula and IFNs shots).
Exifs : Askar FRA300 + PegasusAstro Nyx-101 + PlayerOne Poseidon C Pro cooled at 0°C / Askar Duo Magic D1 filter 2” Halpha/OIII / - Guiding System Askar FMA135 with PlayerOne Ceres C
300 lights 60 seconds each - 183 selected for stacking (3 hours 3 min exposure for final shot)
No flat, no bias and no dark …
Stacked with Pixinsight (WBPP)- Post-Treatment with Pixinsight was a really tough one.
