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NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula Final SHO image, Martin Dowd
NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula Final SHO image
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NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula Final SHO image

NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula Final SHO image, Martin Dowd
NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula Final SHO image
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula Final SHO image

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Finally finished my first SHO image of NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula using the 2600MM and Antlia 3nm filters.
Very happy with the result under Bortle 8 skies and Full to first quarter Moon.
It’s taken just over a month due to persistent cloudy nights but managed to put together about 5 hours of data. I only have a window of less than 2 hours on this object during the night due to my roof , my TV antenna and a big tree obstructing its ascending view.

Bortle 8 City suburban skies
Full moon to first quarter 
Seeing average 
8” f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon fibre Newtonian 
Skywatcher EQ6-R pro mount
ZWO 2600MM cooled to -10C , Gain 100
TS Optics GPU coma corrector 
ZWO EAF 
ZWO EFW 7 x 2” 
Antlia 3nm filters 
Orion 60mm guide scope with helical focuser 
ZWO 120MM guide camera 
Ha 34 x 3 min dithered subs 
Oiii 30 x 3 min dithered subs
Sii 29 x 3 min dithered subs 
Full calibration suite ( Flats,  Darks and Bias )
Tracking and Goto EQMOD and Stellarium 
Captured using APT 
PHD2 Multistar guiding ( guiding over all sessions was excellent, lowest numbers ever achieved on this mount in 4 years , 0.37 arc sec total rms. )
Stacked in ASTAP ( ASTAP produced a much cleaner , lower noise stacked image than with DSS ) 
Processed in Startools V1.8 via Compose 
In colour module used the 4th SHO matrix blend and tweaked saturation and colour bias amounts 
It should be noted , this is the first image where I didn’t use any Startools gradient reduction ( Wipe module ) For only 5 hours of data I expected more noise but the stacked image was very clean before loading into Startools.
I’d certainly like to add more data and see what 10 or 12 hours would produce but by the time this cloudy weather clears this object will limit my window to less than an hour. I’ll have to wait until next year. 

Comments welcome 
Thanks for looking

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NGC 2070 Tarantula Nebula Final SHO image, Martin Dowd