mackiedlm

Thats a real corker! lovely colours and well framed with the other smaller galaxies playing a supporting role.

Thats come out really well, lots of detail.

BTW @Prathab I think you mean "This was shot on Apr 21st, so moon was not up till 4:00AM" - the moon was bright that night, about 75% I think, and high in Leos head and therefore quite close to your target. This accounts, I think, for a lot of the noise and gradients in your image.  It is very difficult to capture broadband targets with that much moon in play and many imagers (myself included) will not even try. I had been planning to try the owl nebula with a L-enhance filter (narrow band) that night but as there was a high haze, the sky was very bright and the Oiii band tends to let some moonlight leak  I didnt bother.

On a very quick look at those, the star shapes are much the same in the 5 min sub compared to the 3 min which suggests this is not a guiding issue. So definitely look at the lens and also make sure there is no tilt.

I also strongly advise using darks in calibration that will help reduce the noise. I dont know ccd's very well (at all actually!), but if this was a cmos, like my own, I'd be saying to drop your exposure down, the 5 mins are showing big bloated stars and very bright noisy background with bad gradients - all suggesting your exposure is too long for those conditions.

Good luck, I look forward to seeing your next images.

Hi there,

first off let me say I am far from expert, not much more than a beginner myself, so take all that follows with appropriate sceptesism - hopefully the real experts will correct me.

I have take a go at your data and produced this

My thoughts on your data;

Your stars are not the best - this is a AbberationInspector  mosaic from PI and you can see they are all flared on one side- right across the image. I'm not sure if this is poor guiding or if its optical - tilt maybe? whatever, I think this is the reason we cant get much detail or structure in the galaxy.

Then you have some pretty funky gradients and vignetting and its pretty noisy. Can you tell us, exposure duration, did you calibrate with darks, flats, etc and what was the sky like - moon, high haze ???

On the plus side, the camera is clearly very sensitive and I think if you can resolve the above problems you have a set up that can deliver great images.

I do hope this helps a bit. And, for what its worth, I always find M101 to be a complete pig to capture and process!

That's excellent - you have got so much of the faint outer glow and again your stars are just superb.

+1 to what @geeklee said stars are beautiful. Considering where it is in our skies right now that is excellent.

Thats come out fantastic especially for a first with a dedicated cooled camera. I'd say your settings look about spot on.

That is just fantastic. Really makes you stop and think about what you are looking at.

This was way shorter integration than intended ending up at just 2 hours.  With the 80 ED FL of 510mm its really a bit on the small side so a moderate crop included. I really struggled with the background - I think because of high haze and short time on target

SW Evostar 80ED, NEQ6, ASI2600MC 40 x 180s

C & C appreciated.

That's really nice. This is not an easy target and you've done it well

I really like that. The FOV is really nice, gives the feel of isolation but still with detail and structure in the Galaxy

That's a really nice image. Brighter and less brooding than this sometimes comes out

 I seem to have great difficulty getting a good result on M101. It feels like it should be a relatively easy target - well placed for me, bright, nice contrast plenty of structure etc. But it just never seems to be that easy, for me at least.

This was a bit of an experiment using lower gain and a shorter exposure (gain 0, 120s) as I was having trouble with my background in the previous image. I'm not sure it made much difference overall. Its better than my previous M101's but still not where i'd like to get to with it.

This is 160 x 120s, with the SW Evostar 80ED on the NEQ6 and the ASI2600mc

C & C appreciated

1 hour ago, Karen Johnson said:

After 6 months of research, getting help from members, getting my kit together, learning how to post process, I FINALLY got to do my first shoot this week and this is the result.  
 

Skywatcher ED80, Canon EOS 450d, modded with light pollution filter, EQ3 mount, using APT to control camera.  15 exposures of 120 sec, ISO 1600, 10 darks then the camera battery died!  Here it is, M81 and M82.  I think it is a bit noisy so next time will try ISO 800, also need to remove frame that had satellite trails.   Could not have done it without support from here and the lovely guy I bought my telescope from.  Next step, buy a dummy battery with usb power for camera.

Thats a really great first image. This is a wonderful hobby and with a start like that you have a great road in front of you.

Beautiful image,  super detail.

Catching up on processing of data captured before I rolled the LX200 out.

This was taken on the easter week-end but this is about my 4th attempt to process - I'm not sure why but but I really struggled with the background. Also the stars are not great - looks like a bit of trailing but guiding was good, PA was good enough and nothing had changed to make flexure any more likely. So any suggestions as to what caused it would be appreciated.

Anyway, its 55 X 180s SW Evostar 80ED, ASI2600mc

Super image, nice colours and great detail

Thats a fantastic image. I always find this a really difficult target to do justice on but this is right on point!

I'm a bit dissapoined with this one, I think my sky was just not clear enough so I had to work too hard to try to bring out the faint outer ring and it just does not feel right now - background seems dodgy!.

But anyway, This is the 8" LX 200 GPS, wedge, the SW 0.85 reducer and the ASI2600mc Gain 100 Bin 2x2. Came in at about 4 hours of 120s subs.

This is a very light crop, just for edges, so the stars are clearly improved over the Meade 0.63 reducer right out to the corners. Below is a quick crop of one corner with the LX200 and the 0.63 Meade 4000 reducer - same camera (its the corner cropped from my M51 posted earlier). So using the SW 0.85 reducer for the  80ED seems to work, if not perfectly then certainly better than the Meade 0.63. I think another mm in backfocus may help a little too.

really nice image Adam, the galaxy is great colour and detai - the stars are beautiful.

Thats a lovely image, really nice colours and detail. Agree that the background is a bit dark but still a great image.

54 minutes ago, Gerr said:

Not sure on your rhetoric but it’s the image that counts and I like it. Nicely detailed and dusty galactic arms bisecting the central bright galactic core. A small object that you’ve captured well with pin point stars too. Your guiding must of been good. Impressive image. Well done.

Gerr.

"Rhetoric" ??

But thanks.

Yes its been great. I've still a few from the short FL to do and the big scopes on the cross eye right now.

I have been moaning on and on about the coma in the old LX200 GPS and how it is not fixed by the meade 4000 F 6.3 Reducer. Then I read post on here 9sorry cant find it now) which suggested that modern refractor FF / FR 's may work better than the specific Meade FF / FR . So I stuck the SW 80 ED 0.85 FF / FR on the Big Blue Trash Can last night and thought "in for a penny...." So bolted the ASI2600mc on and sent it off to find the Needle. Now its giving me 1700mm FL (although plate solve says 1900), and with the 2600 mc that comes to a image scale of around 0.4". So I binned it 2 X 2. I got this...

about 4 hours of 120s (gain100, Offset 50, Bin 2x2

Now, the stars are still not the best but I think its now down to seeing and guiding because the horrible U shaped coma in the corners and the smearing as you come in further is pretty much gone. This is a slight crop (awful gradient) but not near as tight as needed when I use the 0.63. I am both astonished (the received wisdom is that refractor reducers will simply not work with SCT ) and delighted. With some better seeing and some tweaking on the setup for better guiding I think this is going to work!