gorann

Great details there Wim, including all the Ha emitting regions! Here is what I came up with when merging our data. Nice details in the galaxy and a lot of IFN:

As you can see Coddington's nebula IC2574 is a galaxy! It is a dwarf spiral galaxy discovered by American astronomer Edwin Foster Coddington in 1898. At the time galaxies were not clearly distinguished from other lumps of nebulosity. It is an outlying member of the M81 group. For those that believe in dark matter this galaxy is made up of 90% of the stuff. Just like M81 and M82, this galaxy is surrounded by a lot of IFN (Integrated Flux Nebulosity), which is faintly shining dust energized by the collective radiation of the Milky Way. The RASA is great for disclosing IFN. This is 9 hours of RASA8 (ASI2600MC, no filter) data (see https://www.astrobin.com/8z3xtt/C/ ) and to the galaxy I have added 19 hours of LHaRGB data collected by Wim van Berlo @wimvb with his SW MN190 telescope and ASI294MM. Please zoom in - there is quite a bit of detail to be seen in the galaxy. Here is Wim's post showing his close up of the galaxy:

After CMOS took over I get the feeling that astrophotographers are less occupied with pixel scale. I see experienced astrophotographers using these new 3.76 µm pixel cameras on any focal length between 135 mm (like Olly, me and others) and 3.5 meters (like John Hayes with his 20" scope in Chile). So, my advice is just to get on with it. You can experiment with software binning after you taken your images. ASI 2600MC is a great camera (I have three) but there are other less expensive and good alternatives with the same sensor (I also have an Omegon variant of it that works great).

Thanks Simmo, that is where I also landed. A good compromise.

So the obvious is to go for a compromise. So here is a 33%:66% mix of A and B:

Thank you all! The vote appears to lean for version B. I think I may agree. More dynamic, making the nebulosity stand out a bit more.

This is a rather rarely imaged area in the busy Cephus that I imaged two nights ago with my dual-RASA8 rig. I ended up with a version with rather brownish dust that I quite liked, Then when I had a look at Astrobin for other images of the area, I found a striking variation in the colour of the dust. With a few tweaks of the curves of the three colour channels, I could get also a rather nice bluish shine on the dust. So, now I am confused about which one is more pleasing. Any opinion is much appreciated! Astroprocessing is clearly very arbitrary, Camera was ASI2600MC without filter. 183 x 3 minutes. Praoessed in PI and PS.

Aladin Sky Atlas is an excellent free source. Google and you find it. There is a web version and one you can install on your computer.

Great image, especially for 90 min, and you really reinforced the original selling argument from Celestron when they introduced the RASA line. And then, when you finally get a long clear night - aim it for something faint and it will blow you away (with or without star spikes)!

Thanks a lot Chris! Yes, Pink Floyd's Animals album immediately came to mind.

Yes, it is possibly a result of doing StarXT on the un-stretched image. I never tried that but like Dave and Olly I stretch the image first so I get the stars at a level I like and then run StarXT. That may be the reason why I never run into any blotch similar to yours. I have more hard to believe that NoiseXT would be the problem - it has been quite subtle on my images (I use the standard settings).

Thanks Michael, much appreciated!

Thanks Maximidius! Much appreciated even if you slightly misspelled my name😆

Thanks a lot Carole! Good it is not only me seeing pigs in space🤣

Thanks a lot! I hope you get the chance to get a RASA one day - it is a new world of imaging.

Thanks a lot Maximidius! Yes, it really seems to be blowing at light years distances, however that works.

Thank you so much, you are too kind but I will try not to disappoint😉

It was clear for a few hours until 22.30 and I aimed my dual RASA8 rig at these faint nebulae from the Lynds catalogue. There are very few images of these very faint objects. When, after finished the processing, I turned the image 180° I realized that there was a pig in space - do you also see it? It seems to be chased by a ghost while letting out quite a bit of gas😄 RASA8 with ASI2600MC (no filter). 93 x 3 min. Processed in PI and PS including the excellent XTerminator procedures. Cheers and CS, Göran

Thanks a lot Paul! Seeing those small galaxies come out of the data also adds an extra joy to the processing.

Thanks a lot Bryan - first time I hear that! You are too kind😅

Good point. Aperture rules as usual.

This is hopefully a start of a joint project with Wim @wimvb, if it will clear up around Stockholm. The idea is that I will collect the wide-field IFN dust with my RASAs, which I now have done, and Wim is grabbing the finer details in the galaxy with his SW MN190 (yes, Coddington's nebula IC2574 is a galaxy!). Wim has started but needs the sky to clear - I have been more lucky lately here in western Sweden. So here is the result of 9+ hours from Tuesday night with my dual RASA8 rig and ASI2600MC (no filter). Processed in PI and PS with all the new XTerminator tricks. If you zoom in you can see that the RASA managed to collect quite a lot of galactic detail. Cheers, Göran

Thank you Olly! Invisible processing is a great compliment! I guess that is what we all strive for.

Thanks a lot! Much appreciated!