NGC7000 - North America Nebula

23:07 19/4/2006 UTC

My Zenithstar has collection of like every imaginable aberration... It really makes ugly images, mostly due to field curvature. I had North America Nebula nicely framed but large parts of the image was completely unusable. This is a crop from the one side of the image, where the sharpest stars were (And amp glow of course...). I had also minor guiding problems which caused me to toss out three frames lowering the total exposure to just over one hour. However taken from the dark site, raw images had wonderful signal to noise ratio. I could have exposed at least 15 minute subs, but I did not trust my mount setup enough... I think I image rest of the season with the 200f6 newton despite it is very hard for my mount. Time to start saving money...

Camera: Modified Canon EOS 350D | Telescope: William Optics Zenithstar 66mm f6 petzval refractor | Mount: Orion Skyview Pro, Boxdoerfer PowerFlex MTS-3SLP drive controller | Filters: Baader UHC-S 2", Baader Fringe Killer | Guiding: , Orion ShortTube 80mm f5 refractor, QCGuider, Phillips ToUCam Pro II webcam | Exposure: 10 x 420s (1h10m) f6 ISO800, 6 darks, 5 flats | Software: IRIS, GIMP | Location: 60°31'N 26°52'E (Koivula/Kotka,FI)