I haven’t image the Prawn Nebula since 2022 and back then I was using my 2600MC OSC. The Prawn Nebula was well placed throughout May and captured around 10 hrs of data over 3 nights using my 2600MM and Antlia 3nm SHO filters.Most of the data was captured during a waning moon.
Captured over 3 nights ( 10 hours integration)
Waning Moon 75% to 25%
Seeing conditions poor to average ( high humidity )
Heavy dew after 9pm on all 3 nights
Bortle 8 City suburban skies
8”f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon fibre Newtonian Reflector
Skywatcher EQ6-R pro mount
ZWO 2600MM cooled to -10C , Gain 100
ZWO 7x2” EFW
ZWO EAF
Orion 60mm guide scope with helical focuser
ZWO 120MM guide camera
PHD2 Multistar guiding ( total error avg 0.50 to 0.60 arc sec )
Antlia 3nm Filters
Ha 75 x 3min dithered subs
Oiii 60 x 3min dithered subs
Sii 62 x 3min dithered subs
Darks frames from Library
Flats Ha , Oiii and Sii
Flat Darks Ha, Oiii and Sii
Analysed , Calibrated, Stacked and Aligned in ASTAP
Processed in Startools V1.8 via Compose
Colour HST / SHO preset with saturation and colour bias adjustments
Didn’t capture RGB stars , instead used Startools Shrink module with a Star mask and adjusted colour taming and halo extend parameters. Not perfect but Stars are good enough for me considering it’s an SHO palette.
All 3 nights had heavy dew setting in early ( around 9pm ) so used my Kendrick heater band on the guide scope which works a treat but heater bands on carbon newts don’t work very well , so decided to use my 400mm pedestal fan and blew air over the Newt all night. It worked surprisingly well and allowed me to image through to the early hours. I didn’t think it would work but it did , and over 3 different nights where humidity was above 85%. That old fan is now apart of my Astro kit.
Quite pleased with the final image considering condition's
Link to Astrobin for full resolution……..,
https://www.astrobin.com/j4c5ig/
Original frame version reduced res 200kB
Crop version for a closer look reduced res 200KB
Comments welcome
Thanks for looking
Martin