M33 - A first foray with a dedicated astro-cam

[blackparticle]

I came to the conclusion that to get the best out of my Pentax DSLR I had to be running exposures of 10+ min at ISO100. I was going to get a guide camera but an SXVF-M8C came up for about the same price as a Lodestar so I took a punt on it instead.

The M8C is a tricky camera to use with its 3.125 micron pixels. Starlight Xpress have really designed this to be used with M42 camera lenses and on my Equinox 66 at 400mm @ f/6 these tiny pixels had a similar effect of trying to image at 1000mm @ f/12 with something like the SXVF-H16.

I got a quick first light with it before getting clouded out and then a full nights session of happy snapping. Still unguided on the NEQ6, I had to keep the subs short at 60 seconds to stop PE creeping in and even then, I think I was 10 - 15 seconds over what I should have been aiming for. Still, I got in over 7hrs worth of data.

I also learnt a few things like, if it's under 45deg in the sky and in the haze, don't bother and don't forget to check the rotational alignment of the camera between different nights imaging.

425 x 60s (20 darks) - SXVF-M8C (1x1) / Equinox 66 - Image Size 33%

I might do a shootout against the Pentax with the M8C as the guide-cam to compare the difference. I found out the K10D is actually a CCD and not a CMOS so a comparison would be interesting.

Alan.

[blinky]

Very nice, M33 is a very hard target as it is really faint but you have some nice detail in that image.

[gary1968]

Seconded! It is a very nice image, thanks for sharing.

Gary

[DugDog]

Very nice! Not an easy target, you made it look easy.

[Doug]

Hi Alan

That is really good thanks for sharing

Doug

Essex

[blackparticle]

Cheers for the comments.

I knew M33 was faint as it's almost face-on but I didn't quite realise just how little data the outer arms provides. Having a look at one of the single 16-bit ( 0 - 65535 ) subs, the black-point hits around 3800, the core max'd out at approx 4500 with the remaining data only containing a few of the brighter stars.

I didn't use any filters with this.. I'll also have to try another session with an LP filter to see if I can get more contrast at source and extract anything from the 0 - 3800 range of data.

[blackparticle]

One thing that puzzled me.. What is that pink cluster towards the bottom left of the image?

I went back to the subs and did an x3 drizzle on that region coupled with some image enhancement.

Is that part of M33? Whatever it is.. It looks like a challenge.