My 1st amateur SPC900 long exposure

[davesparx]

I know that it's not that good but I'm really proud of this. It's M51 on my long exposure SPC900. I've never done this before. I used a skywatcher 200P with QHY5 finder/guider and used a focal reducer on the SPC900 (0.8x). I've stacked the image but it still looks really blurry.

Please can anyone tell me why it's so blurry?

Many thanks,

David

[Daniel-K]

its just a tad out of focus but thats a cracking shot with that webcam!

[JamesF]

That's a very nice shot for a first go. Puts mine to shame: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/156974-my-first-ever-dso-images/

I reckon you might still have a bit of drifting in the guiding. If you look at the stars they look a bit oddly shaped, and they're all oddly shaped in the same way. I agree that it's a smidge out of focus, too. You don't say if you used any darks, but they might help pull out some of the noise if you didn't. You also have some stacking artefacts around the edges of the frame. If you crop those off you may find that you can reduce the black point further which may give a bit more contrast?

James

[valleyman]

Well done. It is really tough getting exact focus, but you have done great.

[davesparx]

Thanks ever so much. I see what you mean. If I actually crop the image to the point where I can reduce the artifacts, it makes it a better stack?

Thanks to everyone who thinks it's ok. It was an 098BQ CCD as well. I have an 098BL that I'm going to give a first light to, later :-)

[davesparx]

I did use about 5 darks but I'm very new to this :-)

[JamesF]

Thanks ever so much. I see what you mean. If I actually crop the image to the point where I can reduce the artifacts, it makes it a better stack?

Assuming you're working on this in photoshop or gimp, after you've stacked the images and tweaked the white point and/or midpoint in levels a little so you can tell what you're working with you'll see the artefacts around the edges where not all the stacked frames fully overlapped. The dark areas there will artificially distort the histogram and you won't actually be able to see where the black point should be. If you crop the affected edges off then the histogram will more accurately represent the colours in the image that you want to keep, and you can then move the black point up towards them.

James

[davesparx]

Hi there, James

Thanks for that. I didn't think of that. I will try again. I've kept the subs but didn't think that it looked around the edges. There's so much to learn! I was quite impressed with it being a converted webcam, though! I have a feeling that I'm going to be spending a lot more money soon :-)

[JamesF]

I think there's the potential for lots of fun to be had with the SPC900 and LX mod. I originally intended mine to be a sky camera, but I might have to convert another just to play with for imaging despite having better cameras. If I can clean up the tracking of my EQ3-2 and get it on a second pier of some kind I could well be tempted to set off a "proper" imaging run on a scope on the NEQ6 and then run something else using the SPC900 on the EQ3-2 just for the fun of it.

James

[AceShaw]

Looks great david!

[todd8137]

Focus focus focus,look at the shape of the stars ,but still a great little image

Pat

[Si W]

A Very Good first attempt David, you'll get better at it with time, it come's with practice, after looking closer you can see the bridge of gas and stars between the two Galaxies, it still cease's to amaze me the image quality that these little web cams can produce.

[jeremy1]

I must say. That picture is bloomin amazing. Ok so it's not the best picture I've seen on SGL but to get such a good result on a webcam is fantastic.