DaveS

Last night (16/4/24) I managed to collect 4 hours of RGB in Bin 2 despite the very bright moon. Initial stacking and Gradient Reduction in AstroArt 8. One of the Blue subs didn't make it into the stack, but the rest were combined and sent to PixInsight for SPCC, BlurX, NoiseX and GHS (Which I'm still getting to grips with). Graxpert was used on the resultant RGB to knock down the very bright halo around the star at bottom left. Brought back into AA8 for LRGB synthesis, and slight Saturation Boost. Saved as PNG and JPEG. JPEG posted here as the PNG is a bit big.

Work very much in progress. This is just 4 hours 40 mins (28 x 10 min subs) with the ODK 12 and ASI 533MM. I'm posting because I don't know when I will get the chance of collecting any RGB data, it may be next year now. Initial Sigma Stacking and Gradient Reduction in AstroArt 8, then BlurX, NoiseX and GHS in PixInsight. I didn't like the huge gradient from the bright star bottom left so threw it into Graxpert which got rid of the gradient, but may have left a hole around that star, not sure. A final Histogram Stretch on AA8 to bring the range down before saving as a PNG. I need a shed load more data, but when I'll get it is anybody's guess.

I need to stop looking at the RASA 14.

Crikey, that's DEEP! Tidal structures i've never seen before.

Ooh, I do like that, very much do I like that! Masses of detail from such a close crop, and some lovely blue in the distorted spiral arms. it's on my target list but with several unfinished HCG targets and the current rubbish weather it may have to wait until next year. I think "Galaxy Season" is effectively over for this year. .

Tonight, 9.30 pm on BBC 4.

That is very impressive.

Got some nice detail in the "Eyes".

Yep, more (Much more) integration time. Signal / Noise goes as the square root of integration time, so to double your S/N requires four time the integration, but as that's still only 3 hours it's well worth doing. For Markarian's Chain I might be thinking of 12+ hours (Sorry). I would also be inclined to rotate the camera by 90 degrees for better framing.

A Scan custom build, Ryzen 9750 CPU, 64GB RAM, 1 and 2 TB m2 storage. Processing in AstroArt 8 sp5 for stacking and LRGB synthesis, PixInsight for a lot of the heavy lifting, including SPCC, and RC tools.

The South West Astronomy Show should be doable for me, about an hour according to Gmaps. The W3W location seems weirdly appropriate Zone. Total. Rainy.

Thanks guys. Yes, I think cropping the two stars at the left would be a mistake, bringing the edge of the frame too close to NGC 1055, plus they do bring something to the image, green glow or not. I have had to crop off quite large alignment edges already, especially from the right of the frame, I think my sky model or PA wasn't quite as accurate as I thought. Since rectified BTW.

Thanks for the positive comments all. I guess I can be very self critical, and a bit of a perfectionist.

I hesitate to post this as I'm dubious about the quality, but heigh-ho. In any case it's yet another silk purse effort. The data was collected over 9 (!) nights between the end of Sept 2022 and the last week of Jan 2023, though not all the data was useable as I had cable dragging that caused massive trailing. And of course all the subs have that horrid corruption from reflections. Graxpert helped but I still had to use a masked histogram stretch and multiple rounds of single colour attenuation in AstroArt 8, in addition to all the PI magic pixies. 69 mixed 5 and 10 min Lum subs (Accidental, not intentional), 11 17.5 min Blue subs, 19 10 min Green subs and 17 10 min Red subs (G2v calibration). Yes, there's a horrible green halo around the upper left star, no I can't be asked to remove it, plus a touch of Unsharp Mask and another slight Red reduction in the galaxies. Feel free to tear this apart, I won't be offended.

I haven't bought a 'scope since the ODK 12, and can't see myself buying anything for the foreseeable. Perhaps if I lived somewhere with more clear dark nights I might, but I cannot see any point in buying something that just won't be used. In fact I have to question whether astronomy from the UK has any future, with the increasing light pollution and cloud. The professionals have long since decamped to more favourable locations, so the only hope for us amateurs who cannot move abroad is remote hosting or robotic imaging, both of which are expensive.

I still have the Megrez 90 that I bought when I goot back into astronomy in 2011 or so, I think it does have FPL 53 glass. No, it's not for sale and will have to be prised from my cold dead hands lol.

I have a hankering after one of the Borg 55FL astrographs which I could afford but in no way justify.

It would have to be my ODK 12 which is my most used 'scope. It's probably also the highest quality.

Scott Manley already has a preliminary assessment / analysis.

Thanks guys for the votes of confidence. It's well worth having a look in the background, there are a lot of faint fuzzies lurking there.

For sure this was a lot more successful than most people expected.

Didn't make it through reentry and the booster landed hard, so there will have to be a mishap investigation, but hopefully not too much of a delay.

Crazy reentry footage.

Looking good so far 🤞

Yup, yet another reprocess, blame the rubbish weather. M106 with data captured in 2022, before I cured the reflections from OOUK's rubbish anodising that was giving un-calibratable reflections, so trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Making a complete pig's ear from a silk purse is easy for me lol. Originally I captured a load of LRGB data in bin 1 but in the end combined all the LRGB data into a synthetic luminance and captured fresh RGB data in bin 2 I needed to be brutal in the processing to kill the irregularities in the background, GraXpert helped, and BlurX in PI brought out the detail. Dunno, I've been kicking this around so much I've lost track of what I've been doing but there's an Unsharp Mask in there somewhere and several rounds of single colour attenuation to clean up the background. It doesn't take much effort to find horrors in the background, but I'm done with this rubbish data. In the unlikely event that I get enough clear nights I may revisit this target with completely new data, but until then...