Friday night was full moon night, so I decided to do some narrowband imaging. I didn't get started on the setup until after 11, after hanging out with the family for a while, so it wasn't until about midnight that my trusty ccd was in action. This moon was extra large and really bright - there was a lot of moisture in the air.
My target was NGC 1499, also known as the California Nebula. This is a very large object so it didn't fit entirely on the chip. I used the H-Alpha, OIII, and SII filters for a total of 90 minutes, 40 minutes, and 40 minutes respectively. Click here for a larger version.
When I went to process it I ran into some of the usual interesting challenges, so finally I just decided to let it tell me what color it wanted to be. After all narrowband images really aren't true color anyway. I sort of used the color pallette from CFHT (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) but also took some liberties. I think this color is appropriate because it reminds me of the color of sunsets you might see on a California beach.
There is a neat "shape" towards the upper right of the image that reminds me of a horse.
I finished up Friday night (Saturday morning) with a few short images of David Levy's new comet, but I have not processed those yet. By night's end it was dewing over (rare for Tucson) and everything, including me, was dripping wet. Friday night was the TAAA meeting night but I was tired after a very hectic work week, which was made a bit more difficult by my wife's knee injury from last weekend. So I decided to stay home instead of going to the meeting.
Last night I was hoping to do some more scope work but it ended up being too cloudy to do anything. There were enough holes to align the scope and I was able to play a bit with learning how to drift align with the ccd. I also did some calibration work on the spectrometer. Looks like it's going to be another really rough work week (and cloudy too) so it may be a while before I get out again, but maybe I'll find a few minutes to spare.
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