M57 Ring Nebula - SW Exp200P & QHY5L-II

[SnakeyJ]

Lovely skies here last night until moon rise, but still suffering some tracking problems with the HEQ5 and I gave up on guiding after a brief trial of the new PHD2 beta. However, managed to catch some reasonable data on M57 & M27 with unguided 30 sec exposures and have binned the worst of the star trails. Lot more processing on this in Gimp2, now I've discovered the GMIC tools - even some deconvolution for Nick (though without PSF). Even managed to stretch out a little glimpse of IC1296, which given the size and magnitude is pretty good going with this camera!

Despite good transparancy the seeing wasn't great - though still better than my previous attempts at this nebula.

[Scott]

That's a pretty good effort Jake, especially considering it's really a guide/planetary camera. I've got the same (only mono) so I might have a play around with it.

I've not managed to catch IC1296 with the unmodded DSLR, Does that mean the qhy is more sensitive?

Just one more question though, I notice you've used the 8" sw newt but it says @ 900mm. how do you do this? sorry if its an obvious question .

[VigdisVZ]

Great work Jake, I think you got a smidgeon green in it, if you check the stars up close. I dont have HLVG on this computer (or my laptop) and the link is down, but you shoud easily be able to correct it.

[tich]

Great work there Jake I've tried LX mode with mine but without any success so not sure what I'm doing wrong. Not sure if it's EZP or just me being hopeless lol.

[SnakeyJ]

That's a pretty good effort Jake, especially considering it's really a guide/planetary camera. I've got the same (only mono) so I might have a play around with it.

I've not managed to catch IC1296 with the unmodded DSLR, Does that mean the qhy is more sensitive?

Just one more question though, I notice you've used the 8" sw newt but it says @ 900mm. how do you do this? sorry if its an obvious question .

Thanks Scott - I'm using the mono QHY5L-II and Baader LRGB CCD filter set. The camera is pretty noisy, but it only occassionally produces FPN and then this only seems to affect the first four frames of an LX capture. Unfortunately to offset the noise you have to capture and stack more frames which kind of spoils the effect. But for 30s exposures at 10% gain I think pretty acceptable performance, albeit with a woefully small fov I would imagine the QE and noise levels are favourable compared to the cannon, but this will never compete on the small chip and the ADC is only giving 12bit colour depth.

Re the focal length, I'm using SW's coma corrector which is also a 0.9x focal reducer - probably no need with the coma correction on this fov, but 1/2 a stop faster for imaging.

[SnakeyJ]

Great work Jake, I think you got a smidgeon green in it, if you check the stars up close. I dont have HLVG on this computer (or my laptop) and the link is down, but you shoud easily be able to correct it.

Skol Carl, quite right on the green gradient - though I've tried not to clip the data too hard and concentrated on the colour/detail in the nebula. I'm using Gimp2 (as can't afford PS!), so sadly no nice HVLG tool - but I should be able to select out the nebula and correct the background colour balance - way too much yellow in those brighter stars as well.

This all gets seriously addictive, but must get back to doing some work for a little!

[JamesF]

Looks good. I'm probably also inclined towards Carl's view that there's a touch too much green. I'd expect the inner part of the "ring" to be a touch more blue I think. Nice catch with IC1296 too. I don't think that shows up at all on my (not great, certainly) M57 image from a couple of weeks back. It's something like mag 15.

James

[SnakeyJ]

Great work there Jake I've tried LX mode with mine but without any success so not sure what I'm doing wrong. Not sure if it's EZP or just me being hopeless lol.

Hi Titch, It'll be EZP and buggy QHY API DLLs - The newer beta versions of both firecapture and sharpcap are running the latest APIs for the camera's native drivers. These work now without the frequent hangs, but are still a little ponderous and clunky - just don't attempt 2x binning as this will hang. Alternatively, I'm told (but have not tried) the ascom drivers are much better for LX use. Firecapture does not support ascom, but I've a feeling that Sharpcap does in beta (from memory it might be limited colour depth). Alternatively there are always the commercial products (Nebulosity, Astroart, PI and, the daddy, Maxim DL).

[SnakeyJ]

Quick revisit to remove green background and make the nebula more blue:

Needs more work as the background now looks very clipped and I've lost the detail on IC1296!

[JamesF]

I definitely think that looks better, Jake.

James

[tich]

Hi Titch, It'll be EZP and buggy QHY API DLLs - The newer beta versions of both firecapture and sharpcap are running the latest APIs for the camera's native drivers. These work now without the frequent hangs, but are still a little ponderous and clunky - just don't attempt 2x binning as this will hang. Alternatively, I'm told (but have not tried) the ascom drivers are much better for LX use. Firecapture does not support ascom, but I've a feeling that Sharpcap does in beta (from memory it might be limited colour depth). Alternatively there are always the commercial products (Nebulosity, Astroart, PI and, the daddy, Maxim DL).

Thanks Jake I'll give firecapture & sharpcap a go sometime as EZP I found was pretty hopeless in LX mode but worked well in video mode.

[SnakeyJ]

Thanks Jake I'll give firecapture & sharpcap a go sometime as EZP I found was pretty hopeless in LX mode but worked well in video mode.

Tich you won't be disspointed with either of these, both are great products and so much more functionality than EZP. It's a little bleeding edge, but I would strongly recommend going with the beta versions for the improved support for this cameras. I haven't had any issues other than the QHY drivers/APIs and both developers (Torsten for firecapture and Robin for sharpcap) are extremely proactive on both the support and development fronts.

[JamesF]

You know, it occurs to me that you could process IC1296 separately and blend it back in to the second image

James

[SnakeyJ]

Will do James - but first back to the real world and chase some clients up for their money!

[JamesF]

Yes, I have similar problems myself. Work is the curse of the imaging classes

James

[SnakeyJ]

Yes, I have similar problems myself. Work is the curse of the imaging classes

I agree to a point, but I did spend 4 hours in work processing, posting here and downloading/installing Astrotortilla - though at some points I have to concentrate on the more mundane and earn or chase a little money. Otherwise I'll never be able to afford those little luxuries/necessities like an Atik 460EX, NEQ6, narrowband filters, VX10.... It just goes on and on doesn't it?

[NickK]

Lovely skies here last night until moon rise, but still suffering some tracking problems with the HEQ5 and I gave up on guiding after a brief trial of the new PHD2 beta. However, managed to catch some reasonable data on M57 & M27 with unguided 30 sec exposures and have binned the worst of the star trails. Lot more processing on this in Gimp2, now I've discovered the GMIC tools - even some deconvolution for Nick (though without PSF). Even managed to stretch out a little glimpse of IC1296, which given the size and magnitude is pretty good going with this camera!

Very good!

The PSF deconvolution works best on linear data (ie not stretched or heavily processed - other than removing CCD noise) so it makes it hard.

[andyo]

Nice capture the rework is even better

[SnakeyJ]

Cheers Nick & Andy,

Slowly improving my processing skills, but the tips, critique and encouragement really help. Never ceases to amaze me what can be captured and resolved under UK skies.

Jake

[davestorey]

very pretty,keep up the good work :-)