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Eastern Veil - First Light Altair 80/480 Triplet


badgers

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Hello Everyone,

I recently got a new telescope which explains the weather in the UK for the past 3 weeks.

This is the first-light of my Altair Astro Wave Series 80mm Triplet Apo refractor (f/6).

I bought this scope to hopefully complement my lovely 150mm Newt.

Anyway, it's my first time using a refractor and my first time on a wide-ish field.

I decided to test it out on the eastern veil nebula, as it fits quite nicely in the frame.

I'm really quite happy with both the telescope and the results.

I'll be posting a brief review of the scope later tonight and I'll link it here, but overall I love it!

Any comments on processing and other tricks most welcome!

This is 8 hours of data from my balcony in lovely light-polluted Cambridge.

3 hours of h-alpha unbinned in 20 minute subs

2 hours of Luminance unbinned in 10 minute subs

3 hours of R,G and B unbinned in 10 minute subs.

The RGB and Luminance were captured last night, but I didn't take the meridian into account so the Red frames were captured before a meridian flip, so I had some issues with Red gradients in the RGB, but it seems reasonably fixed now.

The Halpha data was nice but badly framed, I rescued it by merging it into the Luminance data in photoshop (lighten blend).

Processing:

  • Flats, Darks and Bias
  • Image calibration and registration (Pixinsight)
  • Merging of H-alpha and Luminance (Photoshop)
  • DBE on the Red channel (Pixinsight)
  • LRGB combination (Pixinsight)
  • Color calibration (Pixinsight)
  • Curves and histograms (Photoshop)

Given the size of the scope and the fact that it's a bit slower than my newt, I'm very happy with how much its pulling out.

I've not yet flattened the whole field (1mm out or so) and I've a little bit of tilt to deal with, but overall a good start I think.

8083472868_7abbdb0b15_b.jpg

Thanks for looking,

Anton

Here's the shiny new scope:

8015581434_e7c09e73a3_c.jpg

8015582476_2a3168264c_c.jpg

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I look forward to the day when I can understand a single word of your post :wink:

lol! It's not so bad, 12 months ago I was about to go and buy my first scope for £80 from Jessops and didn't realise you could stick a camera on a telescope.

Thankfully, I discovered this site... didn't buy the Jessops scope.... spent an absolute fortune... learned a whole new language.... but had lots of fun : )

Anton

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Very nice :) Great first image :) That looks a very nice scope :)

Thank's Gina, I love it!

I feel unfaithful to my Skywatcher though, but It'll be collimated and dusted off when Galaxy season comes around in the spring.

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It's certainly a bit different in colour from my version. Mine is red and greeny blue which ties in better with the theoretical colours of Ha and OIII which are the main emissions from this nebula.

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Thanks guys, I think you are right the monitor I did the last processing on didn't have great calibration, looking again on the laptop it did look a bit off.

How is this version ?

This was how it looked leaving PixInsight before any remaining photoshop.

8085512932_2ab13b6737_b.jpg

If the colour balance looks better, I can do some final tweaks with this version.

Thanks Again,

Anton

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Great pic and good processing. On my screen the 2nd version looks a small bit green, that might be just my screen. Just wondering how only the Red channel needed DBE from a light polluted site? Were the Green and Blue un-affected after the flip?

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Great pic and good processing. On my screen the 2nd version looks a small bit green, that might be just my screen. Just wondering how only the Red channel needed DBE from a light polluted site? Were the Green and Blue un-affected after the flip?

I'm still scratching my head on this one Tom. I think that perhaps it was light leakage for the Red frames (shot first) that wasn't present in the new orientation after the flip.

Manual filter wheels are a b@gger for letting in stray light, I probably need to construct a shroud for it.

As I'm shooting in a city location there is plenty of stray light around. The neighbours turning on their balcony lights will do the trick.

Anton

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Second version is looking great... maybe a little bit pushed to hard? Try using the star mask function and a little "Morphologicaltransformation" of the brighter stars in PI.

Thanks 'Darth Takahashi'! lol, best name I've seen on here for a while. I dreamed about the Tak FSQ85 when I was saving for the Altair... some day I hope.

I'll try some more PI magic tonight.

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Brilliant image Badgers really lovely, shame we have not had any decent runs of clear nights for you but with images like this mate you should be a very happy chappy indeed.

Thanks Mark, still waiting on a clear run of nights to try and come down to darkest Suffolk.

Anton

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