Constellation: Monoceros
NGC2264 is popularly known as the Cone Nebula.
22 January 2006
Exposure: 5x600s Ha (13nm), Artemis 285. C8 @ f6 (fl. ~1200mm), binning 1x1 Autoguiding: Takahashi FS60c (fl. 354mm) and Vesta SC3 webcam Mount: Vixen GPDX. FS60C mounted at the end of counterweight shaft. This was a tracking test after replacing the C8 dovetail with tube rings and after replacing the home made adjustable guiding adapter with the original clamshell clamp (not adjustable). The temperature was -14C with quite a lot of fog/frost in the air so conditions were far from ideal. But the main purpose was to test whether hight precision guiding could be achieved through guiding, and this is the first time ever I can claim successful imaging with 600s single exposures and 1x1 binning! K3CCDTools was used for guiding and it reported 0.7" STD in RA. In DEC there are still problems, some kind of torsional effect is happening, this must be further investigated. The images are calibrated, aligned and stacked using ImageTOOLSca Image below is reduced size, click the image for full size version! |