MarsG76

This is a reprocessed image of the Sculptor Galaxy Data I captured and posted previously. During the week when I was imaging the Helix Nebula, I was exposing it when it was east of the meridian. So as it hit 15 degrees past the meridian and the meridian flip happened, there was no guide star in the OAG FOV so I had the option to pack up and continue imaging another day or try for another object and hope for a guide star. As the sculptor galaxy was close to the location I slewed to it (with favour western horizon selected in the CGEM settings) and to my joy when the sculptor galaxy was framed a 1/3rd of the frame to the edge there was a guide star in the OAG... WOO HOO :grin: ... and so a second object imaging continued. After getting 3 nights worth of ISO400 10 minute RGB subs, I found that after processing the image was very amber at best.. almost sepia... and no matter what I done to it it always looked too green or purple at certain parts... just didn't look right. When I eventually got a chance, I was going to image some pure blue subs to add to the image to correct for the amber look, but as luck would happen, forecast was for at least a week of clouds and rain... this week was no better BUT I did see a break in clouds the other day with a 3/4 FULL MOON!!!! :mad: I couldn't afford to let this opportunity go to waste so I imaged NGC253 through a Halpha filter to cut out the moon glow... remembering that when imaging through Halpha in the 40D there is a lot of data in red (of course) and about 30% as bright in the blue channel.... I thought that I could use that added to blue as well as add some halpha to red and perhaps reveal some nebulosity. I only managed 8 x 15 minute subs before clouds started coming and 4 out of those were usable.

This is a reprocessed image of the Helix Nebula Data I captured and posted previously. This image has been exposed across 4 nights, 2 nights through a HAlpha filter and 2 nights through a OIII filter using my modded 40D. Helix nebula is fainter than I thought it was going to be, I had to image it at ISO800 30 minute HAlpha subs and ISO1250 OIII 30 minute subs, total of 8 hours through each through my 8" SCT at F10. I just wish I captured more clearly the comet shock waves visible in the Hubble images... But overall I'm happy with how it came out... As always there is room for improvement...

The 8SE in action.....

Crop of the re-processed full frame M16 June/July 2015.

On 7th August 2015 I setup the scope and started imaging the Cat's Paw nebula, when I checked on the system 30 minutes later I was DISSAPONTED to find that clouds rolled in... I waited for the clouds to clear but no luck... While I was waiting for the clouds to clear before packing up I decided to reprocess my M16 data that I captured across 7 nights in June and July. Here are the reprocessed images... I'm quite happy with these seeing that the data was captured through Baader Ha, SII and OIII filters on a full spectrum modded uncooled Canon 40D, nights are quite cool tho, about the 6 degree C mark so I guess that helped. I concentrated on lowering the amount of purple halos around stars and attempted to preserve maximum detail, the purple halos are still there but not as severe as in the first version. I still have a bit of noise/grain in these images, but when I ran the noise reduction filter I started to lose detail, and the level adjustment that the detail wasn't effected too much the amount of noise reduction was not worth changing. I think this was the best balance between noise and detail.

Saturn captured at f20 on 28th July 2015 using Celestron Skyris 618C.

Imaged F10 on a 8" SCT. OIII and the SII data was very dim and I had to push it more to bring out some nebulosity in that spectrum increasing the noise... Hence the purple halos on the NB image. I'll reprocess the narrowband image and attempt to remove the purple by tightening stars in the SII and OIII channels. Image tech specs.... H-alpha: ISO400 7 x 1800s Subs 7 x 900s Subs SII: ISO800 12 x 1800s subs 4 x 2700s subs 5 x 2160s subs OIII: ISO640 4 x 1800s subs 6 x 2100s subs 5 x 1500s subs RGB: ISO400 9 x 630s subs 7 x 350s subs 10 x 150s subs Data captured across 7 nights in June and July 2015.