Thursday, November 4, 2021

NGC 7293 - Helix Nebula - Don't laugh - 14 minutes & 200mm lens?

NGC 7293 or commonly known as the Helix nebula is approximately 650 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius.  It is a Planetary Nebula approximately 2.9 light-years which formed as the central dying star blew off its outer layers of gas leaving a small hot dense core.

So I have always wanted to image this but it is really low and we have high trees so I actually never though it was possible at all.  Just for giggles after finishing another object I pointed the mount and camera in the direction of the Helix and it was there just above the trees.  It soon disappeared however I did get 14 minutes on it before going away.  If it were visible for an hour it might be worth imaging with larger setup but for less than a half hour this will do.  Actually I was happy to get anything. 

I cropped it heavily and was very creative with new noise reduction as it was bad, not to mention the gradients.  Also, there were no support frames for this either - not even darks so I had to remove hot pixels by hand.  If you are a pixel peeper see how many you can find.  I decided to make a gif of the 14 subframes so you get an idea how close the trees are to it - the gif is my first ever attempt and is low quality.   





NGC 7293 - Helix Nebula - Don't laugh - 14 minutes & 200mm lens?
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Telescope: Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM Lens
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 200mm
f/4.0
Focal Reducer: none
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Adaptor: ZWO EOS Filter Drawer
Filter: IDAS NBZ (2-inch)
Focuser: None
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to a ZWO Mini guidescope - None
Exposure: NBZ 14 x 60
Gain: 120
Offset 0
Temp: 0 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Gradient Exterminator, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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