Adreneline

Excellent result. Very atmospheric result that puts the focus right on the Bubble. If you wish you can reduce the halos in PS using Reduce Noise: I've attached the result as a tif for you to look at. HTH Thanks for sharing. Ngc_7635_SHO_vol1.tif

Very nice Bryan - I like it a lot. I'm a big fan of mosaics and of APP - it does a great job so easily - a task that is a real challenge in PI. Starnet++ is great for sorting out stars. It runs as a command line application on a PC (? - not tried this myself) and a Mac (I'm not a fan of Terminal) or will run from within PI as a Process on the PC. Once you've stretched the image a bit you can remove the stars and create a star only image (can be used as a mask) and a separate starless image. You can then continue to stretch the starless image and add back the stars once you've done. Straton will also remove stars but not imho not as well as Starnet++. Thanks for sharing. Adrian

A very pleasing result. Can you provide more details on processing? I've come to the uninformed conclusion after four years of AP that star clusters are the hardest things to image. M44 is the only one I've been brave enough to post on SGL; all my other attempts were in my opinion not up to standard. I've had so many attempts at M45 I've lost count! Thanks for sharing. Adrian

Hi Tristan, The app was called Light Pad and it is indeed very handy but unfortunately no longer available; I use it on my old iPad 2. There are similar apps available (like Trace Table and LightBox Extra) but nothing quite like Light Pad. Adrian

I am also happy with the results I get from 1.25" Baader filters mounted in an eight position ZWO-EFW and used with an ASI1600 with Samyang 135mm and Canon 200mm lenses. This is a screen shot of my flats - Samyang 135mm at f2 Ha on the left - Canon 200mm at f2.8 Ha on the right. Flats taken using SGPro Wizard with an iPad Lightbox app as the light source and tee-shirt cloth stretched over the lens. (Exposure times are all down to the level of brightness I set on the iPad app). I nearly always end up cropping off the outer 10% anyway due to suspect stars in the corners. HTH with your deliberations. Adrian

As an imager I don't really know what the correct answer is to your question but I know what works for me. My imaging scope is a camera lens that sits in a large tube ring. At the beginning of each imaging session I centre Polaris on the cross hairs of the polarscope and then I centre the imaging scope cross hairs on Polaris so I know the imaging scope is aligned with the polarscope. I then perform a polar alignment; I used to do this just using the polarscope and an iPhone app but I now use the PA routine built into the ASIair software to refine my 'visual' method. Following the PA I know the mount is aligned with the NCP and I have confidence my imaging scope is centre on the NCP as well. When I slew to my first reference star, e.g. Capella, I can pretty well guarantee it is slap in the middle of the field of view but I plate slove using ASIair and then sync the mount using Sky Safari. I then slew to a second reference star and it is usually bang on target; if it is not a second plate solve and sync mount and I am good to go. I readily achieve 300s unguided images without star trails; having said that I typically only use 120s or maybe 180s exposures. So, after all that, in my view it is advisable and desirable to align the main scope with the poalr scope. Adrian

This is one of my favourite objects. Very nice Gina. Your 135mm certainly does the business. Adrian

I have a very similar problem with my Samyang 135 and my Canon 200. Try as I may I cannot achieve the same focus I achieve with Ha. The resulting FWHM figures are always higher with OIII and coincidently with G and especially B. I’ve taken to reducing star size in OIII before combining. Any residual halos I lose with noise filtering in PS. Adrian

Good luck! I look forward to seeing your first NB image Adrian

I agree, in fact I often feel the Ha alone reveals far more structure and depth for many of these nebula regions. Compared with the LRGBha your Ha is almost 3D! I think it is really stunning! This is probably heresey but I have found that Lum rarely adds anything to a nebula image. Duck! Back below the parapet I go! Thanks for sharing. Adrian

Nice image! I wish my first image of this target had been this good. Interesting inasmuch that all the previous images I've seen indicate the horse is looking the other way! Adrian

Not at all - it's all relevant and appreciated by me. Thanks again. Adrian

The overlap on each adjoining frame is around 40-50% so I thought APP would do it easily. This was the first time I had used images taken on opposite sides of the meridian so I automatically assumed that was the problem. I might experiment a bit more to see if I can get it to work. I use a Lenovo laptop, a MacBook Pro or a 9 year old iMac - they all seem to work at pretty much the same speed when pre-processing and integrating images in APP or PI. I always post process on the MBP or the iMac just because the screen is so much better. Adrian

Hi Adam. That is what I've done in the past - thrown the whole lot into APP and out pops the end result. This time I just could not get it to work despite making adjustment to Analyse Stars and Normalisation. It seemed to really struggle with the flipped images. I even left it over night and it was getting no where. It was at that stage I decided to process each frame separately. From left to right I could get frames 1 and 2 to merge and frames 3, 4 and 5 to merge but not the two halves together. I think processing separately and applying ABE in PI on each frame made a better job of handling the gradients. Adrian

Hi. I've used the lens a couple of times. I used a TS Optics EoS adapter to fit the lens to my Atik 428ex (before I sold it). I found it very difficult to get the spacing corrent to allow me to achieve focus. I've got a few images produced with the lens (on a hard disk somewhere!) but I didn't post on this forum. I initially used the lens with a Geoptik EoS adapter; one night it detached itself from the adapter and bounced around the patio! Testament to the lens that it suffered no damage at all - the lens hood took the impact and even that was barely marked. Of the two lenses the 135mm is amazing and I love using it - although at the moment I am tending to use my Canon 200mm more. Good luck.

Thank you Adam. I like seeing these targets in relation to one another and I also like to be able to compare relative sizes of lesser know objects with the well known ones. I'd love to get some OIII for each region, especially Sh2-284 but the weather is so unpredictable that I can't see getting 2 hours plus for the weak OIII components. This is the region covered - I was amazed Astrometry.net managed to plate solve it! Thank you Tristan. It helps using an f2.8 lens - it's like using the Samyang with slightly better resolution - it hoovers up photons pretty well. Thank you Tom. I might have the missing slice imaged with another lens but I was hoping to do the whole thing with the 200mm; it is a bit annoying that I miscalculated but maybe I'll be lucky and get a chance to go back and fill in a few of the gaps. I've not looked at NINA - I've got enough for my old brain with PI and APP. For this image I pre-processed and integrated each of the five images in APP. I then took each frame into PI and did a dynamic crop to get rid of the edge effects (and create the missing slice it would seem!) followed by ABE to remove the gradients. All five frames then went back into APP to assemble the mosaic. The Cone and the adjoining image needed to be flipped in PI before I could persuade APP to create the mosaic (they were both imaged after the region had passed the meridian). Thank you again for all the kind comments. Adrian

I couldn't resist having a go at another mega-mosaic. I had already imaged the Cone, the Rosette and, thanks to @Kinch,Sh2-284 so I filled in the gaps (nearly) over five nights in total and stitched it altogether in APP. I've done my best to make it seamless but it was very difficult dealing with the range of gradients across so many nights at such differing elevations above my most light polluted horizon. I think I am right in saying that 'Up' (North) is to the left; the image should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise. All imaged with a Canon 200mm + ASI1600 - all unguided on iOptron CEM25-EC. All 180s except the Rosette which is 120s; in total there is just over two hours of total exposure time in the image. I'd like to add OIII to all of this but with the weather in the UK that's unlikely to be this year! Apologies for the large (megabytes) image; I was going to post the png until I noticed it was 220MB! Thanks for looking. Adrian

I hope not 😟 - seems pretty unlikely I hope 🤔 I did try (borrow) a step down ring but it was only a single stop step down and I couldn't detect any noticable improvement. I am beginning to think it is a stacking issue. I can detect no difference between APP and PI but I have noticed that using drizzle in APP definitely helps (as I guess it would in PI). As you point out it is a pretty big FoV so losing a bit is no big deal. Thanks again. Adrian

Very nice indeed - really like the understated colours. Adrian

Thanks for the advice on stopping down the lens, a trick I can employ with my Samyang 135mm and 85mm but not the Canon - the Canon is a fixed 2.8 lens - there is no aperature adjustment - unless I am missing something Mind you that does give the advantage of no spikes around the stars. There are strange artefacts associated with the stars in the corners of the image. Each corner is slightly different so I'm struggling to understand what is the problem. Could it just be the lens optics? Alignment? Droop? Spacing? Really not sure. I've spent hours tweaking and adjusting all to little or no effect. I'm sure it is not the lack of guiding because when I do guide the artefacts are still there. There is quite a difference in focus position for R/Ha/SII compared with R/G/OIII - perhaps more than I would have expected. Thanks again for the advice and kind comments. Adrian

This is my first serious attempt at a cluster and I have found it really difficult to keep halos and star colours under control, and even now I'm not sure I managed it! To be truthful I've had lots of goes at M45 but been too ashamed of the resulting images to post them here; I clearly still have much to learn when it comes to clusters! This is 10 x 60s of R, G and B taken with an ASI1600MM-Pro with Canon 200mm unguided on an iOptrom CEM25-EC. Pre-processed in APP and PI and finished in PS. This is image is uncropped - other than registering edge effects. There are some dodgy stars in the corners which I am trying to sort; I can't decide whether it is spacing or something else. I've manged to resolve some of the doublets in the image (sort of) but not all and I'm not sure whether that is down to 'seeing' or lack of resolution of the camera/lens combination. Plenty of room for improvement I fear. Thanks for looking and all advice and comments welcome. Adrian

Take a look at this ( one example of many such sites/sources). I use a white tee shirt and an iPad as a light source and the wizard in SGPro - it works for me. Good luck.

Sounds like you're imaging in a really challenging environment with lots of LP. I had a go at removing the gradients best I can in the attached tif. Good luck with the new gear. Adrian _0r2_ABE_ABE.tif

Well I've been imaging the Rosette in Ha over the past clear nights so I might shift over a tad and centre on Sh2-284 and see if a rough and ready mosiac might be possible with my 200mm Canon lens. I've got it on the Sky Safari screen as I type. Isn't retirement great! I waited 44 years for it and I love it! Enjoy and CS. Adrian

I like that a lot and Sh2-284 is now added to my list of targets to take sight on - maybe this weekend if the weather forecast is to be believed! The HOO-SHO combination works really well - just goes to show we have to be open minded to possibilities. Excellent! Thank you for sharing. Adrian