M81 & M82 first light LRGB with 314L+ & ED80 - WIP

[Gina]

A quick hour or so in the early hours of this morning with a rare nice clear sky following mist earlier. A mere 12 subs of 3m luminance unbinned and 4 subs each of 2m RGB binned 2x2. Stacked in DSS, aligned in RegiStar and combined/processed in PS. I'm hoping to collect more data later.

[Chris]

Wow you have been buisy Gina:) this is a great M81/82 well done:)

[Delboy_Hog]

That's lovely Gina, really nice!

[Stephen Green]

Another great image Gina

Stephen

[Gina]

Wow you have been buisy Gina:) this is a great M81/82 well done:)

Thank you Chris I've been getting so frustrated lately, particularly when a clear night has been forecast and then the mist/fog comes down!! It started the same last night. The stars were out but no galaxies or nebulae were visible and the moon was lighting up the thin mist and swamping everything. Then a miracle happened - the mist went away and from 10pm it was a lovely clear sky. I felt I had to make the best use of it I could

[Gina]

That's lovely Gina, really nice!

Thank you Derek

[Gina]

Another great image Gina

Stephen

Thank you Stephen

[Ewan]

Spot on Gina well done, pin sharp & lovely colour, last night was very good this way if your aim was mainly Lunar :-), cannot complain as i was out until early this morning, dew was a bit of a problem only enforcing on me that an anti dew kit is now on the cards next.

[Gina]

Spot on Gina well done, pin sharp & lovely colour, last night was very good this way if your aim was mainly Lunar :-), cannot complain as i was out until early this morning, dew was a bit of a problem only enforcing on me that an anti dew kit is now on the cards next.

Thank you I had ice on some of my kit last night but I do have dew heaters for the scopes.

[StuartJPP]

Nice one Gina!

[Gina]

Thank you

[WaveSoarer]

Ooh, that's very nice indeed. You managed to get very good contrast despite the moon being up.

[Gina]

Thank you In fact the moon had almost set when I did this. The run ended with the coming of daylight I'm continuing with this capture tonight but the clouds are starting to appear so don't know for how much longer.

[astro mick]

Exerllent work Gina,lovely detail in the Galaxies.

I,ve just had a tweak of mine to see if i could highlight the H-Alpha regions in M81.

You must be well pleased with your result.

Mick.

[Gina]

Thank you Mick Yes, I feel quite pleased with mine - always wants more data of course

[Farooq]

Nicely done Gina, I am envious of the fact that with such small exposures you can get such good results. You must live in a relatively light pollution area. Also the colour balance, I take it your RGB are all combined in 1:1:1.

Ever since the street light started working in my area, I am getting horrendous colour balance. Before I could get away with 1:1:1, now even if I balance it properly for my setup at 1: 1.2 :1.6 I still get heavy red and green hues due to light pollution.

[Gina]

Thank you Yes, this is a rural area with quite low light pollution. The Atik 314L+ mono CCD camera is extremely sensitive and so low noise that darks are unnecessary. It's like raising the blind and letting the light in after a DSLR but took a long time to save up the funds for the camera and filter wheel and filters. Well worth saving up for and I'm really delighted with it. The Evostar ED80 is a great scope and being APO the filters are parfocal so I can run LRGBLRGBLRGB sequence with L set to 180s, in this case, bin 1x1 and the RGL all set to 120s bin 2x2. So yes RGB are 1:1:1 exposures. I do adjust individual colour curves to adjust colour balance at different brightness levels though - Photoshop is so versatile

Now we just need the weather to cooperate

Sorry to read of your dreaded strret light - that's really bad luck!

[fwm891]

Great image Gina - worth the wait into the wee small hours.... More matchsticks required

[Coco]

Hi, very nice, well done also for getting both targets in one image ..

The colour fringing is a little disturbing, perhaps its the combined binned images that did it?

[Gina]

Thank you Francis Seems it needs the "night shift" to catch any decent weather

Here's last night's capture and today's processing. 32 luminance of 180s bin 1x1 and 14 RGB of 120s bin 2x2.

[Gina]

Been out and taken a pile of 66 flats. Using Gerd Neumann flat panel on 12v and 314L+ exposure of 0.04s for the Luminance filter (ED80 with no FR/FF).

Have now added tthe flats into the luminance stack and re-processed. Here's the result.

[Quatermass]

Great image Gina very interesting seeing how you and Rik have progressed on this one, I am going to have to get myself a decent ccd camera one of these days the difference between that and the DSLR is quite stunning.

[Jessun]

Beautiful Gina!

/Jesper

[Gina]

Great image Gina very interesting seeing how you and Rik have progressed on this one, I am going to have to get myself a decent ccd camera one of these days the difference between that and the DSLR is quite stunning.

Thank you Mark Yes, I'm quite surprised at how very much better a mono CCD camera is. I know I've got what is generally considered the most sensitive and lowest noise of the mono CCDs - at the expense of sensor size. It's quite adequate though as long as you plan to use all of it and not crop too much to improve framing as is customery with DSLRs. That is something I miss but cost is a major consideration and when a second hand Atik 314L+ came up on here I grabbed it. Of course, it's not just camera but filter wheel and filters as well though the cost of those can be spread over time a bit. I started off with camera and Ha filter using the DSLR for broadband colour. Then got FW and OIII filter. Finally, after accumulating some more funds I bought the Baader LRGB set. I'll probably get an SII filter sometime.

[Chris]

Thats coming on nicely GIna, some lovely detail coming out in the cigar, I also like it orientated that way with Bodes at the bottom:)