geeklee

This started to get into a favourable position earlier in the evening recently and I've had the chance to observe it on Thu 26th and Sat 28th Jan in my 8x40 bins. Both occasions were straight forward to locate and I could make out the nucleus and a little of the faint coma. It was very dim and conditions weren't too favourable. The 26th was around 23:30: The 28th was around 20:00. An easy star hop up from Kochab 👍 On Sunday 29th, it was clear long enough to grab some images! It was good fun capturing and processing a comet. Hopefully I'll get another go without the moon. They comprise 45 x 60s at ~430mm focal length. The first image is using the Comet registration option in AstroPixelProcessor - it gives a nice sense of movement to the image and is easy to use: It was a lot trickier to create this composite image of a starfield and the comet! And a short video to show the movement through those 45 minutes. It's been a spoiled a bit on conversion to GIF. Thanks for looking.

Fantastic set of images Ivor 👍 Well worth all the integration and NGC 1333 must have been a real challenge.

@BrendanC While you'd want to resolve any calibration / light leak issues, I managed to get DBE to clean up NGC 2403 OK - but not perfect of course. Here it is after some (mainly) careful DBE. Left - Original - Unlinked Auto STF Centre - DBE + Auto STF, Right - DBE + Super Auto STF Then SPCC, a little SCNR (although I usually don't need that with SPCC), then EZ soft stretch. At least if you can't get the issue resolved for the data you've already captured, you can probably salvage the above images to some degree - they all look great so I hope you get a satisfactory resolution 🤞

That looks great Adrian. The very faint tendrils dealt with well and are really shown off in the starless version where their extension right down the left side of the "jellyfish" are clear. The starless image also shows the subtlety of the transition into the "plume" - both in colour and interesting detail.

Definitely Michael - I've noticed it on a few images on Astrobin. I imaged this area in Ha recently, but only at 250mm focal length. Here's a crop of that region: This image - https://www.astrobin.com/full/os9l85/0/# - shows it very teal. A nice contrast.

Looks great Michael. Lovely detail and subtle processing & colour.

AstroPixelProcessor (I'm assuming from APP) will give you some options in the stretch/basic processing and has some other great tools within. The light pollution removal tool is excellent and the last few versions also have a star reduction option. I haven't moved to the v2 beta releases yet (I typically use it for mosaics and pre-processing)

Nice one Rick. The detail and nebulosity is coming through very clearly and looks great - even at 100%. Good depth too. Considering what you said in your post about processing - that's the only thing I would have said - some more processing would help keep stars under control (to varying degrees, depending on tools/methods), some noise reduction where applicable and any other tweaks. Not sure if you also calibrated the subs & removed background gradients as part of the above? I'll mention the palette too 😅 I'm guessing this was a simple SHO one with the strong greens in Ha - it's quite something! I believe the 1600MM shows some artefacts on very bright stars. If you search for that, you'll find some examples to check.

Well worth the effort Peter. In the UK, we've just got to go for it!

I shot this over two nights recently. It's always fairly low up here but this is an easy one to get decent data quite quickly. After positioning the mount to clear a telephone cable and hoping the chimney in the South West wouldn't pipe up after the meridian... it was mainly plain sailing! I love the bottom right quadrant, that dust, colour and the depth. Elsewhere it's always hard to get depth - hopefully I've got a little. It's obvious why people keep coming back to this in the winter - it's already one of my favourite images. SW 150PDS + ASI533MC. 180x 60s + 38x10s (the latter used for some trapezium blending later) I thought the mosaic of Auriga was going to be my swan song for the Samyang lens but an opportunity arose on Wednesday 18th January for one last hoover of photons! For now, it's been stripped down for parts (EAF, dovetail, camera, EFW). You might all be reaching for SCNR on this one - sorry about that! I've purposely gone for this to help show off the very faint Ha signal that has very little associated OIII or SII - so up near M35 and right on the very edges of NGC 2174. Samyang 135 + AS533MM. 4h 42m (34x180s Ha, 40x180s OIII, 20x180s SII) Both pre-processed in APP and processed in PixInsight. As always, thanks for looking.

Well worth the effort @Fegato Superb.

At the small forum post size, this looks great. The pockets of Ha showing clearly, a little detail in M110 too! Viewing at normal, full size (100%) some of the star clusters and other small scale details have turned into "worms" and become joined up. It's similar with some of the dust lanes. Not sure if that's multiple applications of BlurXT (if you use that) or another tool. Just something to keep an eye on... if you care about that stuff.

Not at all! Both are very good images and show excellent, clean structure. You've done extremely well with the data you have. From experience I know how frustrating Sh2-240 can be to get "just right" in our own eyes. If you don't get a chance to get more data, you should be very pleased with this one.

It's tricky isn't it! The latest version lost a little of that super OIII from the structure that the top one had - sorry! Maybe a blend of the two? It's nice to see others having the same challenges with this one 😅

Very nice Steve - good detail and bold colours. If you don't want to get rid of all the green you can try (1) a reduced SCNR application in PI or (2) a green colour mask, then shift the colour around with Curves. If you're using the RC tools ( in PI - for stars, StarX in this case) unscreening them and screening them back in gives you a lot of control. The tool tip on StarX for unscreening gives you the description and - I think - the PixelMath formula for putting them back. e.g.

Excellent @wimvb I'll admit I had to kill some nearby intrusive light so I could see And IV ! Very nice capture especially as it was just a quick one! Thanks for the directions and spoilers

I can - maybe one day (Thanks also to @tooth_dr @GalaxyGael@CraigT82@jjosefsen @Sunshine @George Sinanis)

Great shot @MalcolmM I always enjoy seeing the planetary nebula in M46. Can you see it faintly or at all visually? I like the sound of your blended "visual + AP" approach you mentioned.

That's looking great @simmo39 I think resampling the data has helped and you've got some great OIII coming through. Well worth those many sessions! Minor thing, but a little extra background colour balance work, although I appreciate there is faint Ha all round here.

That's looking great and I understand the frustration of catching this through a variety of obstacles - the chimney one rang true as something I only noticed myself recently looking out to the S/SW here! Shorter exposures on the core is a good idea and won't take long to get the needed subs as there's so much signal there. You won't need to spend hours on it. I see you gave yourself some headroom in the image above as it has all this Ha and dust in the background Good luck tonight.

This sounds like the opposite to what should be done. As I understand it, the filter reduces the optical path by ~1/3 of its thickness, so you need to add to the physical path by the same amount to compensate. So 55mm backspace and 1mm filter needs a 0.33mm spacer added to reach 55.3mm physical spacing.

Gorilla glue - I think it may have been slightly expanding stuff where its moisture activated. Maybe not be the most appropriate but the strongest I could find in the garage at the time! Once glued, I taped it up around the join until it had set/cured. This was just mat-to-mat, no velcro.

Hi Ian - I picked up some cheap, thin camping mat and that seemed to work well. Measured up with an overlap, cut, glue, done. I also flocked the inside - this made a big difference visually as the camping mat - while black - was still a little "shiny". The flocking didn't stick as well as I'd hoped but that's what a revision 2 is for! This was used for an imaging scope. Hope this helps.

This is how I understand it. You always add the 1/3 filter thickness to your backspace don't you? This is NOT how I understand it. Always happy to learn something new/correct though.

Thanks again Göran. Necessity of the small 533 sensor forced the larger number of panes in the planned mosaic. As soon as you get to this FOV you start to see what a few panes below and left would do - then you could be in real trouble 🤣 Sadly not. Bortle 5-6 depending on direction with some localised light pollution (street lights etc) mixed in.