Adreneline

Thank you - the RedCat+1600 and Samyang+183 is a win-win combination. I can do a little more "pop" I was going to do a lot more "pop" but thought better of it Thanks again for your kind comments. Adrian

Thank you Jody. It's taken a lot of fiddling around to get the Samyang perfectly setup but having done so it really can deliver detail when used with the ASI183 and it complements the RedCat really well. Adrian

Post as a .jpg or a .png - that should do it

One for the fans of starless images: Adrian

Thank you Lee. Not sure about the veracity of the l.h.s. though. The Samyang + RedCat dual setup is a winner - when it's all singing along together! Adrian

Thanks Vlad. I am really pleased with the way the RedCat and Samyang complement each other so well. For a small lens the SY offers a surprising amount of detail once it's well set up and focussed. Adrian

Thanks Adam - glad you like it. It was refreshing to get a good run at something for a change. Adrian

Last night started off really well and held such great promise with CO showing Green from 1800 - 0500. Wow!! Sadly it was not to be with conditions deteriorating really quickly around midnight - I found it quite difficult to discern the main components of M45 by eye - time to pack up. This is 9hrs 7mins of data - 180m Ha, 90m SII, 235m of OIII and 42m of L ; OIII and L taken with the RedCat + ASI1600MM - Ha and SII taken with the Samyang 135 + ASI183MM - both atop the CEM25EC - unguided. Preprocessed in APP; post-processed in PI. As always C&C welcome. Thanks for looking. Adrian

Very nice Lee - I like that a whole lot - and for only a tad under an hour you've revealed a lot of the background dust. Amazing! In case you are interested I use my Samyang 135 at ~f2.6 but I use a 49mm step down ring on the front of the lens which results in no diffraction spikes around the stars. (My lens has an actual focal length of 129mm so 129/49 gives 2.63). The sdr also gives better shaped stars toward the corners - more of an issue with my ASI183 than with your ASI533 I'm sure. Adrian

These things are so subjective - it's a great image and with excellent framing but as you say I think it may be a tad over smoothed. For what it's worth I think it could take a bit more of a stretch as well. I just ran it through PI quickly and stretched it a bit more, I tried to put a bit of the detail back (not easy on a jpg) and I also realigned the RGB histogram to improve the colour balance and I got this (screenshot only): There is so much nebulosity in this fov I like to try to tease that out - again a very subjective thing - you must do what is right for you. Great idea hanging it on the wall in the new born's bedroom. Adrian

I'm not sure I totally understand the question, however, it is possible to compensate for out of parallel / not orthogonal because the Baader has a built in tilt adjustment. I am pleased - very pleased! - I have not had to use this feature. Apologies if I have misunderstood your question. Adrian

Hi. That looks like what I ordered: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/baader-diamond-steeltrack-focusers/baader-steeltrack-diamond-rt-adapter-m90x1-for-refractors-gso-rc-scopes.html Like you, I could have done without the extra expense but trying to compensate for the droop was like trying to solve the wrong problem and constantly chasing my tail. I'd fix one problem and create another. One word of warning! With the Baader fitted I've found it very easy to find focus with my ASI294MC and my Canon M6 MkII with the supplied spacers. I don't use the RC for narrow band. However, on the odd occasion I want to use an eye piece to allow friends/family to do a bit of stargazing, just using a SW 28mm eye piece, there is no way I can achieve focus with the Baader as the drawer tube is too long. I have to refit the stock focuser. It's a minor thing but just thought I'd mention it. HTH Adrian

Thank you! Glad you like it. Adrian

Hi Geoff, Thank you for the generous comment. Most of the time on the Squid was done by me using a Baader 8.5nm with the Samyang+ASI183MM with the lens stopped down to ~f2.6 with a step-down-ring. I also used a 6nm Astronomik on the RedCat_ASI1600MM. It would be best if Lee @geeklee tells you exactly what he used. As I am sure you know the Squid only shows up in OIII and it is incredibly faint and required every trick in the processing book it seemed to pull it out from the Ha (6nm Astronomik on the Samyang and the RedCat) and SII (6nm on the RedCat only). The real problem is the noise in the OIII despite all the OIII being shot when there was no Moon and in my case from Bortle 3/4 skies. I was lucky and had one exceptional night of seeing with no Moon and managed 50 x 300s of OIII with the Samyang and most of the Squid signal we acquired was in those subs. It is much more apparent in a HOO image but then so is the noise! It's a tough one that's for sure. Good luck. Adrian

Fair enough - I felt the same - but at the end of the day there was clearly a problem with the stock focuser.

My GSO 6" RC suffered vey badly from droop in the focus unit. I replaced it with a Baader Diamond Steeltrack and it made a huge difference. Adrian

Thank you! Glad you like the image. The collaboration produced some real synergy. I have to say I don't like the second image but I know a lot of imagers like a more saturated look to bring out the colours. On my MacBook Pro it looks way too overcooked! - but on my Lenovo laptop it looks about right and the first image looks really quite insipid. But everyone to their own. That's the great thing about NB imaging. Who's to say what it should be like. Thanks again for your kind comments. Adrian

Personally I think it is more than "alright" - I think it is really very good. I am really interested to see what can be achieved with the L-Enhance and 294MC as I have the 294 and so far have only used it in a very limited sense for RGB. One comment I would make (and this is purely a personal thing) is that on my screen there is a bit of a magenta cast to the colour which can be removed by inverting and removing green. I quite understand some people like to see magenta in an image - that's the great thing about NB imaging - lots of different interpretations. Thanks for sharing. Adrian Rosette_SHO.tif

Thank you! Lee ( @geeklee ) and I have put a lot of time into collecting the data and agonising over the processing. You are absolutely right and maybe I should have done more to try to reduce those artefacts but in the end you reach a point where enough is enough and it is time to share your labours with others. I am pretty sure we will collect more data over the coming months/years(!) and then prune some of the existing data which maybe questionable in quality; with luck that might reduce some of the halos. Some of course may be just down to the equipment - 8.5nm vs 6nm OIII filters, we used both. It's never ending - there's always room for improvement! Thank you. Adrian

Thanks guys. Glad you like the image(s). It's been a rewarding experience collaborating with Lee ( @geeklee ) but not sure I/we are going to rush into doing another 6-pane mosaic any time soon! It's really interesting to see that Richard prefered the second image where I have really pushed the saturation. Thanks again for taking the time to comment. Adrian

It would be cheaper to buy a bigger boat than a bigger hard drive for my MacBook Pro! I tend to feel that space is not a gaudy place so I prefer the subtle tones approach to imaging, that said I know others prefer the more full-on approach with lots of colour - so I did both!

Haha! Well to be honest I lost count. When I finally cleared all the data files, integrated masters, mosaics and numerous PixelMath images and their variants off my hard drive to an external drive it amounted to 240 gigabytes of data. I'm pretty certain the processing took more than the 2.875 days to collect the data! Thank you - I'm glad you like it/them. I think the second one is a little over-cooked but it was fun to see just how much colour could be extracted. Adrian

Thanks guys - I thought maybe I'd overdone it a bit. Adrian

Thanks Jody. I've been playing at up'ing the saturation a little - I was wondering if the original was too insipid. Adrian

Thank you for all the kind comments folks. To be honest 69 hours spread out over 16 week in two locations is not that much per night but that said it proved to be really frustrating getting to the point where we had enough to have a go at a complete image. As for the Squid! - trust me it wasn't the Ha that was the problem - it's the noise! Adrian