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Sunday 18 June 2017

Terry Hancock & Walter Holloway: The North America Nebula Under a Waning Moon

35252126541_c0e8811209_k

© Terry Hancock & Walter Holloway
www.grandmesaobservatory.com

Terry Hancock is an award winning American Astro-photographer.

“I wanted to shoot NGC7000 again using a light pollution filter to compare with an identical integration time of thi...s object I did a couple of weeks earlier using an Optolong IRCut/Luminance filter, this time I used the Optolong L-Pro and this was captured in the early hours of June 12 under an almost full (93%) Waning Moon using the QHY367C one shot colour CMOS camera on Walter's Takahashi FSQ-130. I started shooting just after midnight with the moon between 16 to 23 degrees above the horizon and about 90 degrees away from NGC7000. I was very pleased with the result.”

Here's the image in higher resolution
https://www.flickr.com/…/terryha…/35252126541/in/dateposted/

Here's NGC7000 shot on May 28
https://www.flickr.com/…/terryha…/35078897246/in/dateposted/

My opinion of the L-Pro
”If you compare the two images it's quite difficult to tell the difference at first glance however the faint nebula is not quite as pronounce, the star colours are not as natural looking and there is a halo on the very bright stars. Even so under normal circumstances there is no way I would be shooting RGB so close to a full moon but the L-Pro makes that possible for me using the QHY367C. Please bear in mind that the skies here are quite dark (I estimate around 2 to 2.5 on the bortle scale) shooting this in suburbia under a 93% lit moon may give results not quite as pleasing.“

Technical Information
Location:
GrandMesaObservatory.com, Whitewater Colorado
Captured June 12 2017
QHY367C Full Frame One Shot Colour COLDMOS cooled to -20C
Size: 7376 x 4938 pixels
Pixel Size: 4.88um x 4.88um
Total integration Time 60 minutes
Gain 2850, Offset 76
Darks and Flats no Bias
60 x 60 sec @ 1x1
Optics: Takahashi FSQ-130 @ F5.0 650mm
Optolong Luminance Filter for IR Block
Paramount ME German Equatorial Mount
Image Acquisition Maxim DL
Pre Processing Deep Sky Stacker
Post Processing Pixinsight & CS6

Please check out the new observatory on Grand Mesa, Colorado
www.grandmesaobservatory.com

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