kiwiapple
Well-Known Member
You know how sometimes you're surprised by a clear night and find that you hadn't planned out what you might photograph if the conditions were to permit? Well, that happened to me the other night. It was a spectacularly clear day all day, and predictions were for cloud to roll in that evening, but that never happened and as darkness fell it seemed worth a try to see what I might photograph. The presence of a nearly-full moon complicated matters, so I thought I'd try to shoot something as far from the moon as possible, using narrowband filters to boot to keep the moon's impact to a minimum. As I searched for a target, I came across this one, the Banana Nebula or NGC3199, located in the constellation Carina (so one that folks in the Northern Hemisphere won't often get to see). Shot with my ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro camera on an 80mm refractor, it comprises 61 images, 15 shot @ 300 seconds in H-alpha, 4 shot @ 300 seconds in Sii and 14 shot @ 600 seconds in each of H-alpha, Sii and Oiii. These were combined with their respective calibration frames and then manipulated to improve noise, colour, etc in Pixinsight.
