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A moody M78 with a little bit of Barnards loop

Mike Hawtin

By Mike Hawtin
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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Mike Hawtin

Mike Hawtin

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First image of the new year for me due to clouds, clouds and oh yes more **** clouds!!

I've been trying to have a bash at M78 for what seems like ages, so here it is at last, hope you like it. Taken with a 6" Hyperstar and Atik 428EX, preprocessed and stacked in DSS, processed in Pixinsight.

Mike.

50b13e38-ceed-4b1a-89ad-a054c28a65be_thumb.png

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Mike Hawtin

Mike Hawtin

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Thanks Tom, Mark. I still have a way to go with the HyperStar, collimation is not quite there yet but it really is an addictive imaging machine!

I also did another process of the data with more prominent reds which brought out the dust better but left the blue reflection nebulae too subdued, but in the end I preferred this effort. Anyway I'm pleased you like it as it is.

Mike.

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Mike Hawtin

Mike Hawtin

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Coco, she might only be little but I sure lurves her! Filter changes are pretty straightforward, the camera adapter which fits between the camera and the HyperStar unit is threaded for 1.25" filters. You have to remove the camera, swap the filter and then refit the camera, all you need is an index mark and indicator to ensure accurate realignment and Bob's your dads brother! Filter changes and refocussing takes about 5 minutes.

Mike

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Coco

Coco

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Coco, she might only be little but I sure lurves her! Filter changes are pretty straightforward, the camera adapter which fits between the camera and the HyperStar unit is threaded for 1.25" filters. You have to remove the camera, swap the filter and then refit the camera, all you need is an index mark and indicator to ensure accurate realignment and Bob's your dads brother! Filter changes and refocussing takes about 5 minutes.

Mike

sounds not too stressfull

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  • 4 weeks later...
x6gas

x6gas

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Thanks Olly, even with over 6 hours at F/1.9 I think it would benefit from even more luminance! This really is a challenging blighter.

Mike

Really curious how many subs you have and what length you have used for each filter. Are these hyperstars really so fast that you can get away with no guiding even on the really dim stuff? I know that 60 seconds at f/2 is equivalent to 10 minutes at f/6.3 but really interested to know what this means in practice for a target like this...

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Mike Hawtin

Mike Hawtin

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Really curious how many subs you have and what length you have used for each filter. Are these hyperstars really so fast that you can get away with no guiding even on the really dim stuff? I know that 60 seconds at f/2 is equivalent to 10 minutes at f/6.3 but really interested to know what this means in practice for a target like this...

All the exposure details for this one are on the Astrobin link. I'm still feeling my way with the HyperStar, the luminance exposures in this case are 50 seconds each, I have attached a single sub for your interest, no preprocessing, I've given it a quick stretch but had to upload it as a jpeg as I couldn't upload it in the original FITS format.

Whether or not you could do without guiding at all would depend on image scale and your mounts capabilities, but with guiding being so straightforward I personally don't see any reason to accept the limitations of unguided tracking.

Mike.

post-6382-0-97156200-1360550524_thumb.jp

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TakMan

TakMan

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Thanks for posting that single sub Mike...

Wow - shows how faint this really is (even at your fantastic speed), but also what a great job you did with the data to post such a lovely richly detailed/colourful shot.

Very impressed - you have the Hyperstar really performing (I can see now why Olly was complaining when he was on this one at f/6 or something!!!!!)

Damian

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Mike Hawtin

Mike Hawtin

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Thanks Damian

As I said in my last post, I really am feeling my way with the HyperStar and also with processing. I believe there is far more to wring out of the data than I am capable of at present and better capture strategies as well. It's all a learning curve and really absorbing too, I am having a ball with this setup.

Mike

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x6gas

x6gas

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Whether or not you could do without guiding at all would depend on image scale and your mounts capabilities, but with guiding being so straightforward I personally don't see any reason to accept the limitations of unguided tracking.

Mike.

Ah yes but my standard guiding set-up is OAG... Was going to sell my ST80 but maybe I'll hold on to it for a little longer... unless my Orion mini-guider will do the job at this f/l.

Thanks for the info anyway, and apologies I missed the data detail on Astrobin...

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