First guided NGC6960

[Anweniel]

First go at guided imaging so don't laugh too hard!

This is from last night 01.09.12 between 21.00 - 23.15 Moon was at ~ 99.8% luminosity! and seeing was average at best with a bit of thin high cloud.

Wasn't about to let this stop me though and here is just under 1 hour of data. (1x180s, 9x300s, 1x600s) reason for the mish mash of exposure times was that I was trying to see how far I could take the guiding in these conditions so just chucked them all in to the final mix

Calibration frames added and stacked in DSS. All kit used in my sig and subs taken at ISO800. Image processed in GIMP

Although I have some terrible LP I think my flat frames are my weakest element (other than the processing skills/software) and the heavy stretch shows the problems but is necessary (I think??) to pull out the nebula and that distinctive Witches Broom.

Any criticism and advice is welcome

Thanks for looking

[Gina]

That's pretty good for a first go It's a very difficult object - very faint - I think you did well with an unmodded 1000D. Nearby, the Veil is quite a lot brighter and easier to capture. You set yourself a difficult task and did well IMO

There is very slight egging on the smaller stars which probably comes from your longer subs but guiding seems to be working quite well generally. Is this a crop of the full frame? Otherwise I think you might concentrate on your focussing, which seems slightly off. Do you have a Bahtinov mask?

Now you've got guiding working, the world (or rather the universe) is your oyster. Good luck and I look forward to seeing some nice images from you

[Anweniel]

Thanks Gina, I know its probably not the easiest target but it is in a convenient spot and its one I have tried before with the alt-az on shorter exposures. I wanted to make more progress on this before it moves too far round to the South where objects disappear over my roof I will be sure to make a go at the Eastern Veil as well as the Western I would like to make some more progress on this first, hone some skills.

I think the eggy stars are a result of the field not being flat at the edges as I am not using a reducer/flattener, I have cropped a little to allow for the worse of the stars and the artifacts created from stacking. I am using a bahtinov but didnt think I was very far off!

I have had another little play with the image as I said before I think the flats are a let down I may redo them. Heres the effort, it seems to have dragged more out of it but with the hot pixelling (so seems the darks had done a job??)

Still struggling with 52 cygnus though its a bit of a beast in magnitude compared to the adjacent nebula I am trying to image!

[Gina]

One problem you have is that GIMP is only 8 bit. That severely limits the amount of histogram stretching you can do before posterising starts to show. My processing has improved vastly since I got a copy of PhotoShop and used that instead of GIMP.

[Anweniel]

Yes you are right, I do need PS because not only is GIMP 8bit but there is much more support and the availability of plugins etc. Also I think the retry minus the cal pictures proves my initial suspicion that the flats are poor - going to have to revisit this.

Still, small steps. Now the guiding is sorted that's one major improvement and I can progress from there. Thanks for your continued advice and support

[Gina]

You're very welcome - glad to help

[Anweniel]

taken your advice, have got ngc 6992 targetted now. sticking to 10 mins exposures. watch this space

[Anweniel]

Well it took a few attempts and a whoopsie with the power pack meant I only got 2 subs but final a couple of subs from the veil this evening, framing was poor too right on the edge of the frame so this is definitely WIP!

Anyhow, pleased to get something out of it: