M27 Dumbbell - first light with mono ccd

[SimonfromSussex]

I picked up a second hand mono atik 314L (not the plus) last week and had first light with it over the last two nights (how lucky am i with the current weather after buying new kit - it usually rains for weeks!!!).

Blimey! There is a lot to pick up and learn with a mono ccd. I'm used to DSLR imaging.

I think my spacing from chip to focuser needs increasing to make it a bit faster.

C925 with a 0.33 reducer - 5 min subs: x12 lum 1x1, x4 of each colour binned 2x2. It needs more data but I was falling asleep at 2.30pm.

I started off stacking each filter capture in dss and then combined the three colors and lum in photoshop but this didn't look great.

So this is a stack using maxim dl and then curves/levels/color tweak processing in photoshop.

I'd love some feed back and any tips.

[Gina]

Very colourful

[Zendrix]

where did you buy it second handed, please?

Im interested im something like that as well!

Thanks!

[dmahon]

Great luck having cloud free nights - I recently got a camera as well and am pleased with the weather (but not the hours of darkness).

Dunno if you already know this, but if not - in DSS right click on one of your luminance images and select to use it as the reference frame.

Even when you stack the R, G and B leave the reference luminance frame on the list (just unticked) and DSS will magically manipulate all your L,R,G and B stacks so that you can simply combine them in photoshop. Obviously if you're binning, you'd have to stretch the binned images first to match for size.

[SimonfromSussex]

Many thanks Gina,

where did you buy it second handed, please?

Im interested im something like that as well!

Thanks!

I got it from astrobuysell. Obviously you have to be careful on there that the advert is genuine but the guy I got it from was very helpful.

Thanks dmahon, yes I had tried using a reference frame but it didn't seem to work for me (not aligned right). Over on astroshed Keith advised me of a couple of extra steps in dss which i'm gonna try.