M16 Eagle - Atik460ex First Light

[badgers]

Hi All,

Again a lot of firsts for me here.

1) First light of the Atik 460ex

2) First time CCD imaging and LRGB processing

3) First time Imaging away from home

4) First proper nebula (none are visible from my balcony at home)

Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong

It was extremely windy (20mph gusts), it didn't seem to occur to me to check this, I normally image from a sheltered area. This was taken in the middle of a field. My PHD graphs made me want to cry, lovely and flat...then gust and another sub ruined

The moon was out for the luminance images... doh, didn't check that

Choosing an imaging subject that was directly in the holding pattern path for Stanstead Airport was maybe in retrospect a bad idea

I lost at least 15 subs due to aircraft. One sub had no less than 3 trails in it.

My laptop ran out of battery right at the point where I was going to take flats too

At one point I was going to pack up into the car and go home, but I persisted.

This was LRGB. 50 minutes of Luminance in 10 min subs, 15 mins each (in 5 min subs) of RGB (1x1 binned)

M16 - The Eagle Nebula

Processing was done in PixInsight, but I was all over the shop.

The combined LRGB image has a dose of the salmons and obviously the poor guiding has resulted in eggy nasty stars. My attempts to fix this have been half-baked at best. My attempt to debloat stars has left halos too.

Regardless of all this, it's a first light and my start into CCD imaging.

I'm going to keep cracking away at the raw subs and see how much improvement I can get.

Any advice appreciated,

Thanks for looking

[badgers]

I know I'm fairly negative above due to my disappointment about guiding, lost subs and lack of flats...

But I have to say that Atik 460ex is tremendous!

[Delboy_Hog]

Blimey, considering the problems you experienced, I'd say that was a fairly incredible end result! I love it!

[jcm]

Wow! Amazing considering the conditions.

I decided not to bother last night , too windy.

Looks like the Atik has got a winner on their hands with the 460EX.

John

[Black Knight]

Great first light Badgers, despite the problems! The wind was the only reason I wasn't out last night. It was coming from the SW which is just about the worst direction for me as I'm sheltered from the north and east. You must be chuffed!

[BigBlueOne]

Hi Badgers,

I have to say given the hurdles you,ve jumped that is a nice image.

Could I ask you what drove you to choose this model from atik

only Im leaning toward this or the 383 it would be nice to see

someone else's decision process.

Thankyou BigBlueOne

[RikM]

Lovely image for relatively few subs and loads of troubles. Just think what it will be like when everything goes well

[badgers]

Thanks guys, yes I'm extremely chuffed and I'm really glad I made the move to CCD.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the camera can do in perfect conditions and I've a lot of learning to do for CCD processing which I'll start tonight with a full reprocess.

BigBlue... I looked really closely at the 383 as the thing I knew I'd miss most about my Canon 40D would be the large sensor. The 383 had the closest match to my Canon 40D.

But, I settled on the 460ex as a balance between sensor size and noise levels. The 460ex sensor is just small enough to take 1.25" filters without vignetting but large enough that it's not such a shock moving on from the 40D. The noise levels are ridiculously low, such that people often don't do darks with them.

I think they are both great cameras though.

[badgers]

I should also say that it was seeing the Hubble pillars of creation images that got me into astrophotography.

Just being able to make them out from earth with my trusty Skywatcher makes me really very happy.

I think I'll be revisiting M16 a lot, it's a beautiful and amazing object.

[mgirdwood]

excellent image Badgers, and thank you for pointing out another subject that i can attempt in my learning curve. look forward to see any further process changes.

[badgers]

You'd better get cracking mgirdwood!

NASA believe that the pillars of creation were actually destroyed by a supernova around 6000 years ago.

If it's true the light will reach us in around 1000 years

[Grinde]

Awesome first light! Impressive to pull such detail without boosting the contrast with a Ha-filter.

Can't wait to see more images!

[Gina]

You say you had lots of problems, Badger, but my oh my, that's a tremendous image Well done

[davies07]

Really nice result Anton. You should be proud of that.

You were braver than I, going out last night. I thought about it but the wind put me off and I ended up sitting in a chair with a pair of binos and a beer. First night I've been out in a month.

David

[badgers]

Thanks Gina, I'm glad I stuck it out!

Also glad I got out of the city for darker skies.

I'm thanking Quatermass for that, he convinced me to get off my butt and get out of the city.

Nothing growled at me from the bushes though.

[Fay]

Well you should be pleased with your result! All your troubles seem to ring a bell with me, and probably with a lot of others too!!

Fay

[JohnC64]

Stunning image there badgers - Its always a trial when you introduce something new in the workflow. Are you around the back of Marshalls there?

Cheers John

[badgers]

That's the IWM at Duxford John, I have a friend who runs a photography studio on a small farm there and he got me access.

They were preparing for their airshow this weekend and there were spitfires in formation patrolling when I was setting up, I was worried they might start a strafing run.

To be fair it's hardly what you'd call a 'dark site' but it's certainly darker than Chesterton in Cambridge

I was also considering heading up around wicken fen which is darker, but last time I was out that way I got eaten alive by mosquitos.

[badgers]

Tried to reprocess again, paying more attention to star colour and using star masks.

Full frame this time including the trails I tried to remove

[RikM]

Looking good.

If you use sigma clipping to stack, satellite trails should just disappear because they are only on one frame. It normally works best if have quite a few subs in the stack though.

[telesto]

That's a cracking picture, well done

Clive

[badgers]

Thanks Rik,

I used windsorised sigma clipping so I guess if I'd had more frames it would have been resolved.

I'd originally wanted 25minutes for each colour but so many of the frames were unusable that I had to drop to 15minutes.

And even at 15 mins a channel there are still a few frames I'd rather have left out.

[farunj]

Wow!! Thats a beautiful pic!!

[LDUNN1]

Ace Anton! Glad to see you finally get out with the 460EX - looks like you are in my boat with all those firsts & despite all the things you were up against, you bagged a good result there! Just imagine what it's goingt o be like when it's not windy & you don't have all those issues.

I want to give this target a go myself now too ;-)

Ref the logic on buying the 460 - if you had gone for a 383 as it was closer to the sensor size of the 40D, you would not have used teh 40D again. The beauty with the 460 & the 40D is that you might still want to use the 40D for wider field shots sometimes & use teh 460 for the smaller targets. If gives you that flexibility!

If will be good going forward comparing results with you, as it sounds like we both have similar experience (ie non with astro mono CCDs), both coem from imaging with DSLR's, & now both have the 460!

[badgers]

Thanks LD, I agree completely, when it gets colder again my 40D will be out for Andromeda.

Give the eagle a go, it would be great to compare notes. I'll certainly give it another shot when the wind calms down.

Next time hopefully I'll be able to get a few hours of luminance and RGB over a few days.