M44 Beehive cluster

[Sparrow]

Having imaged other clusters successfully, I have to say I'm really dissapointed with this one but thought I'd share it anyway in the hope of ideas how to improve it. I've really struggled to get any star colour in this one. It just doesn't seem to be there - not even in the less bright stars. I kept the subs down to 1 minute 30 seconds but I'm beginning to wonder if they needed to be even shorter for the bright stars to retain some colour.

Aside from this, I'm not convinced my focus was spot on tonight, the guiding was playing up, and it took me two hours to get 15 minutes of data dodging the clouds. Oh - and due to a last minute decision to image, the scope didn't have enough cool down time which leaves me with fuzzy abhorrations on the stars.

Really beginning to think I should have stayed in and watched Casualty!!!

Anyway - feel free to comment.

[Guest]

I know how you feel

Most of my images with the Orion ED-80 of star clusters are disappointing largely I think, due to the lack of dazzling spikes that you get with reflectors (the secondary vanes causing them). Instead I just get dots - not impressive and so now I don't bother - But.

I was going to image the beehive too - perhaps the processing is the issue on yours? I've been learning quite a bit about the various techniques in this area recently one one thing I've found is that if it doesn't look right - try, try again!

David

[Sam]

I think because the beehive cluster is quite bright it doesn't take too long for the camera to loose a bit of colour in the stars. The cores can burn out relatively quickly. The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the big open clusters look far more impressive in the eye piece than they do on screen.

[Sparrow]

Thanks for those kind words David. I have successfully captured and processed many other clusters and managed to bring out plenty of star colour. With this one, I even took one of the raw subs and processed it for star colour without doing any other processing, and there still was no star colour - not even in the dimmer stars) so I'm sure the problem is with the data rather than the processing. Really scratching my head on this one.