Monkey Head Nebula

hi Tony, remember all my shots are taken from SE Spain - all are taken in a suburban area. Generally I have a good clear sky from the garden to the SE - S -SW. Quite a good arc. Although I am back from the sea by a couple of streets - there is generally always good viewing in this quadrant.....no lights beyond. To the East I have city lights and to the West, town lights, causing a glow or the horizons. Both these get bad in the summer when it is more humid - in general not so good anyway when it does get hot & humid in July & August. (Those times also see a lot of people out half the night - lights shining brightly from their gardens, patios etc.) To the North I have Polaris at 37.5 degrees and I can generally shoot between that and the zenith without too much bother. Overall, not bad ....I have never taken the scope to a dark site. Apart from the two months mentioned, I am sure I can keep busy. I have only been at this just over two years now and not all of the time as I am away from the scope many months of the year......just like now

I've never seen or even heard of this nebula before, your tracking is bang on, a fabulously smooth image, this in colour would be amazing, we don't ask for.much
I must try and track it down with the 20" and the narrow band filters next time the club goes out

Thanks Dave. There are some good shots of this in colour on astrobin.
As I told Yohan, I have another 3 subs (45 minutes worth) - if they are OK (I have not even looked) I will see if I can make the shot a little more colourful by the weekend.

Re the guiding: I am lucky enough now - having set up a wi-fi extender, I can now control the scope from inside the house - using TeamViewer. For this one - I spent most of the capture time tweaking PHD2 trying to keep the guiding good.......I never would have done that if I had to stay out with the scope

Kinch wrote: I spent most of the capture time tweaking PHD2 trying to keep the guiding good.......I never would have done that if I had to stay out with the scope

This is a part im finding quite difficult to master ... I know the corrections are mainly custom to each setup but did you follow a specific guide/tutorial on live corrections or just playing around with the various parameters?

In truth Yohan, I played around with everything. I had it working great last time I had the scope up but after my little project and I reinstalled the scope on the pier, I was chasing it all the time on the few nights I got to do any imaging. First I thought it may have been the cables - sorted them a little better but still had the graph up & down, up & down. I knew my polar alignment was fairly OK but did it again. Same. Changed the exposure time up from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 and settled back at 2.....that works OK (I used to have it at 1 second before without problem and it did not cause too many corrections). Then I manually selected a brighter star than PHD2 had automatically selected and I noticed a big improvement. So then I just played with the aggression and min move until the graph lines were reasonable. They went off at times and I once again played mostly with the aggression. I stuck with it all of the time I was doing this image.
Like I said, I had not got this problem before......but then I remembered/realised that light pollution was having an effect on the guide quality at times. I am pretty sure that the recent problems were because of the bright sky (Moon) in the area where I was shooting. I can only prove that to myself when I get back to dark sky again (March or April maybe).
Sorry I can't give you the magic numbers - they do indeed depend on the set-up. You will just need the patience to sit with it some night and note how changing various numbers affect your guiding. I started (in the beginning) with aggression of 70 on each axis, Min move of 2.0 and it worked fine. Make sure though you have a good SNR ratio - around 6 at least I think.........that is what I forgot before manually selecting a star the last time.
Hope you get it sorted...

Its all good advice in there Kinch, thanks!! Thinking of trying in partially clouded skies tomorrow, just cant wait any longer!