MarsG76

I think that your crescent looks fine.. but to adjust colors, try creating a mono luminance layer over a slightly defocused (gaussian blurred) color data, and adjust the color data either in color balance or hue adjustment....

Perhaps a bit more cropped in looks a bit better in the frame...

Hello all,

Sharing with you my quickie exposure... The Trifid nebula, aka M20 or NGC 6514, a popular and bright nebula about 4300 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius.

I had no plans for another object after imaging the "War and Peace" nebula and I didn't want to waste a clear night, so I pointed the scope at M20 and started exposing.

This image was taken through my Celestron 8" SCT on the CGEM at f6.3 using a cooled and astro-modded DSLR.

Exposures:

RGB subs: 6x60s, 5x120s, 5x180s, 5x240s, 4x300s

HII subs: 10x600s

OIII subs: 9x600s

Total Time: 04hr 21min.

Most of this image is natural color because I only used 10% of the HII and OIII stack to emphesize the detail in the red and blue hues.

Clear Skies,

MG

On 19/06/2020 at 21:23, MartinB said:

Well done on getting the camera so well sorted.  It's all looking very promising.  I thought the colour looked a bit odd at first but then saw that this is an Ha SII mix!  Never seen this before.  I think it will really come alive with the addition of OIII.

It almost looks like a photographic negative, but I think that the pale look is almost fitting for something called "War & Peace"...

Hi Astronomers,

Sharing with you my latest image of NGC 6357 in the constellation Scorpius near the better known NGC 6334, AKA the "Cat's Paw" or "Bear Paw" nebula. This nebula was also given the name War and Peace Nebula because of its appearance in infrared images, the bright western part resembles a dove and the eastern part looks like a skull.

This photo was taken through my Celestron 8" SCT at f6.3 (1280mm focal length), tracked on a CGEM and exposed using my full spectrum modded and cooled Canon 40D DSLR.

This image was a bit of an experiment to see how much improvement in noise and sensitivity will be in my long exposed subs after I redesigned the cooling system on my DSLR.. now the sensor temperature was kept at freezing point.
When uncooled the sensor temperature was around 27°-32°C and the first version of the cooling system only cooled and kept the sensor temperature at +/- 1°C of ambience... now with the redesigned cooler, I had the temperature drop to -5°C (from 18°C ambient temp) during test and set the controller to stop cooling at 0°C and start cooling at 1°C when imaging this object. 

The improvement in subs was substantial, 1800 second ISO1600 subs had almost no noise, only few pure white single pixels of noise within the subs, easily removed with single pixel noise reduction, so I'm more than happy with how my 40D is cooled and the subs it's delivering.

This image consists of only my SII and HAlpha subs so it is still a work in progress as I still need to expose the OIII subs to add to the SII and HAlpha frames.

The was I assembled the channels was by using the red channel in SII as RED, red channel in HAlpha as GREEN and a added combination of the faint signal captured in both blue channels of SII and HAlpha (Hbeta signal) as BLUE.

Clear Skies,

MG

On 17/06/2020 at 22:50, rubecula said:

That's a loverly image, I've just added it to my to do list.  Thanks for sharing.

Thank you, I'm looking forward to seeing it, please tag me when you post it.

Thank you for the kind comments.

8 hours ago, R1k said:

My first ever DSO!

M101 with a very cheap (£30) Canon 75-300mm kit lens at 300mm f5.6 mounted on a HEQ5 pro.

Date: 14/6/2020

Lights: 28 x 90sec, ISO 800

Darks: 16

Bias: 60

Flats: Nil

 

Stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS6

 

Lots of faff to get this one, first polar aligned to a pseudo-polaris, then star aligned to a pseudo-arcturus, must’ve been around an hour of messing around before data capture, must continue to practice! 

 

Happy to receive feedback. If anyone wants to have a go with the data, I’m happy to email across the stacked TIF.

excellent 1st DSO... runs rings all over my first DSO....

On 07/06/2020 at 00:03, MartinB said:

Some lovely detail in that image MG

Thank you.. I find it hard to get the crispness I'm after when imaging at this scale.. 1280mm (or 2032mm) focal length need impeccable seeing and atmospheric stillness to get crisp subs.... the best guiding accuracy that I have ever seen on my mount was 0.38" but this image was around the 1" mark...

On 03/06/2020 at 01:48, Adam1234 said:

Very nice

On 03/06/2020 at 01:52, MarkAR said:

Excellent image, very well done.

Thank you

awesome detail.

Great result.. personally I like the more saturated image.... 

Nice Whirlpool... one of those object I wish I could image but unfortunately the planet is in the way....

Definite improvement...  you got so much more data in the reprocess.... nice work.

Beautiful piece of art.... love it.

Fantastic looking image.. love the amount of detail you captured.

Nice harvest of different variety of globbies.....

7 hours ago, Paul M said:

Indeed!

There is no harm in trying. But what a way for those poor, travel weary photons to end their cosmic journey; in my imaging train. They'll be thinking: "Really? We came all this way to be tortured ?!" 🤣

totrured??? or perhaps massaged into an image....

Beautiful.... nice color balancing.

Nice and dusty, you've really brought out the dark nebula nicely.

What a beautiful image.... well done....

If some claim to have seen it with big dobs than it's not just radio and X ray and definitely possible to image... but if only radio or xray make up the jets than I'd have my doubts... but there's only one way to find out..

Great colors and detail... love it.

What a great looking and interesting galaxy.. that faint ring around it makes this image very interesting..

Great result, the wider version looks nicer IMHO.