IC410 - The Tadpoles Ha:OIII

18:11 23/3/2010 UTC

Not the best conditions for OIII imaging. Moon high up and random thin clouds hovering all over the sky. But I just had to take an OIII shot to make a some sort of color composite before summer. In color data background gradients by clouds can be easily managed. I just cut them away with levels and used my previous H-alfa image as luminance and red color information. I think this made a pretty nice image, altough this amount of OIII exposure at moonless clear night would have resulted more color information in the dimmer parts also. But as always, I had to play along with challenging Finnish weather.

Camera: Atik Instruments 4000LE | Telescope: Skywatcher ED80 Pro 80mm f7.5 refractor, William Optics 0.8x focal reducer | Mount: Vixen GP-D2, Boxdoerfer PowerFlex MTS-3SLP drive controller | Filters: Baader H-alpha 7nm 2", Baader OIII 8.5nm 2" | Guiding: , The Imaging Source DMK 21AU04.AS CCD camera, Orion ShortTube 80mm f5 refractor, Stark-Labs PHD Guiding | Exposure: Ha 12x900s (3h) unbinned, CCD @ -25° Ha 12x900s (3h) unbinned, CCD @ -25° 11x600s (1h50m) 2x2 binned, CCD @ -25° f6 | Software: CCDWare CCDStack, Adobe Photoshop CS4, Stark-Labs Nebulosity 2 | Location: 60°31'N 26°52'E (Koivula/Kotka,FI)