MarsG76

Thank you for all of the great feed back.... @Rodd I experimented with various levels on a few screens and on my devices this seemed to give me the best balance between too little contrast and image brightness... different monitors will show different levels.. I wish I could calibrate my monitors & devices....

I second that... all but the Encke divisiion, I easily saw heaps of fine details.... and this is in a 8" SCT... Seeing stability and beind almost overhead definitely make the difference in seeing the finer features.

I know that feeling... and than clouds come during the time you're getting the imaging kit together.

You captured those details nicely... must have been great seeing.

As stated above... the Iris nebula is a different object...

Hi All, I'm sharing my latest image taken with the new camera... The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), also known as the "Eye of God" is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Aquarius. One of the closest planetary nebulae to Earth being 655 light years distant. This image was exposed through a 8" SCT at 1280mm focal length (f6.3) using a QHY268M astro camera, tracked and autoguided on a Hypertuned CGEM mount. The total exposure time spent on this image was 19 hours and 5 minutes worth of H-Alpha, OIII, SII and H-Beta subs. This image is mostly based on the HOO color palette but as a bit of difference and an experiment, I mixed in SII to the red channel and H-Beta to the blue channel before color balancing the image to the photo shown. Clear Skies, MG

This is what I love about this hobby.... there are so many options that we can experiment with... no need to be stuck to only RGB or LRGB, SHO or HOO... it's all fun.

I'd think that a 7nm Baader H-beta CCD filter would be quite good at filtering out all but the desired spectra, Baader seems to have a good reputation.. but maybe you're right and that is a case of reflection nebulosity breaking through as a part of it will be at the same frequency... that said... I don't know if it matters if this leak is the case because the end result is a difference in signal from pure Halpha and the desired effect is reached for the purpose of astro imaging... it would be more critical if this data was to be used for scientific analysis.... I'll image a few more objects using this method in the next few months, object which I imaged in natural color and se what results I get.... I'm confident that this might be a way to go deeper and capture fainter nebulosity from light polluted skies which would otherwise be limited or not possible to capture.

It still might need a little tweak... I was trying to observe Saturn and Jupiter the other night, it wasn't the best seeing, and I didn't see any details on either planets.. just a soft yellowish fuzzy shape... I decided to check collimation before giving up due to poor seeing, and collimation was only slightly out.... I centered the concentric circle with only the slightest turns of the bobs knobs and the view was night and day.... suddenly I saw cloud bands on Jupiter, moon shadows on the globe, shadowing on the rings behind Saturn, the shadow of the rings along the equator and the Cassini division on the rings edges.... It still wasn't the sharpest view I ever seen due to seeing conditions but the difference a small secondary mirror adjustment made was amazing... definitely worth a try.

Seeing is a big factor, but did you check collimation of your C6? The C6 should show the CD quite easily.

Love it.. this is something different.... very ghostly.

Hello All, It's been a while since I posted any images because I was upgrading & replacing faulty cables and cleaning up my observatory as well as Hypertuning my CGEM, doing this between family commitments so it has taken me about 2 months to complete it all. The first object that I imaged using the Hypertuned mount was the Trifid nebula. Trifid nebula, aka M20 or NGC 6514 is a popular and bright nebula about 4300 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. As well as being a test image to determine whether the "Hypertune" has given me any improvement, this image was an experiment I was planning to do for a while, but never got around to doing until now. (I'll write about my adventures and Hypertuning results in another post for anyone interested.) I always wondered if narrowband filters could be used to create a natural color looking image by using H-alpha as red, OIII as green and Hydrogen Beta as blue... logically these wavelengths would closely correspond to the visible Red, Green and Blue, so it made sense that it would be so. I looked up this idea on a few forums and, even though it was mentioned, imagers were advising against it claiming that H-beta is the same as H-alpha except at half brightness... and I have not found any images with this kind of color channel combination. The statement that Ha and Hb are essentially the same data didn't make sense to me simply because the Hb signal is in the blue part of the spectrum as opposed to Ha being in the deep Red, so I thought that surely this will translate to different signal in each of the channels. I did a test exposure and Hbeta was indeed lower brightness but to me there was substantial amount of difference between the two filters, even when I matched the image brightness levels... enough difference for me to try imaging with both narrowband filters as seperate red and blue channels. So seeing this difference between channels, I decided to do a full imaging session spending time to image through all 4 filters, SII, Ha, OIII and Hb, and use all but SII for this particular image below with the aim to use 7nm narrowband filters to create a natural color looking image, combining the narrowband channels in the order Ha, OIII & Hb as RGB. I like the result, as I think that it's convincing of true color and I think that the benefit of using narrowband to create natural/true color images in this way is that light pollution will not limit sub lengths any more and fainter matter can be picked up from more light polluted skies. What do you think? Imaged through an 8" SCT at f6.3 using a QHY268M camera, for a total exposure time of 9 hours and 5 minutes. CS, MG

Looks great.

I say ignore it... the DSLR or your mount is not generating anywhere near the amount of dB that you are allowed to make at night. If you start to invite obviously problematic neighbours (who scream from a distance) to your yard, and they realise that you're using a high power instrument from you back yard, than it wont be too long before they accuse you of being a peeping tom... If they confront you, than two things.. "you don't know what they're talking about..." and make them think you're a nut case... I had a couple of problematic neighbours in the past and them thinking that I'm unstable kept them quiet for years (not telescope related issues).... the crazy mode also works on Jehova's witnesses and mormons... haven't had a knock on the door for over 10 years.

Possibly so.. but I dare say that it's mainly because of a lack of time... if I had more time to observe, I'd be observing much more, possibly every moon and cloud less night.

Looking forward to seeing them.. make sure you tag me so I get notified.

Love it.. great color and detail... great work.

Great result.. I like the amount og detail within the "Dumbell".

That is very good for first images... I can imagine the pictures you'll be coming out with in 6 months... More subs will result in less noise too....