California Nebula NGC1499 in H-alpha

Today I used a break in the clouds to test how the astro-modified Nikon D7000 works with a h-alpha Filter. As the weather was very unstable, I didn’t set up the laptop for guiding, so some images were unusable due to trailing and passing clouds and full cloud cover at the end of the exposure resulted in oly 83x30s unguided exposures. Which way too short, but I am happy with the result under these circumstances.

NGC1499, Baader Planetarium, 1,25″ h-alpha Filter, 83x30s (41,5m) exposure, Astro-Professional 80mm f/7 refractor.

The filter is only 1,25″ size, therefore I was not able to use the flattener, as a result the stars are not round in the corner, and I think there is some tilt in the image, probably also because of the 1,25″ barrel which was used with the filter.

The telescope is illuminated from the near soccer field.

Lots of light pollution and some clouds.