Oh what a night... :) (M78 and NGC2024)

[SteveL]

Bl__dy freezing, but clear all night. So clear in fact that after I finished the first 4 hour bash, I left the kit outside imaging for another 4 hours while I went to get some sleep, so i`m not as sleep deprived as usual today.

First up,

M78

(how odd that both myself and Centroid were imaging the same thing... again!)

OTA: Celestron NexStar 8 GPS @ f/7.(something)

Camera: QHY8 OSC

Guiding: William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD + DSI-C + PHD

Imaging: MaximDL/CCD, 16 x 900s, CLS Filter

Processing: DeepSkyStacker, ImagesPlus, Photoshop CS2 + Noel Carboni's Astro Tools

Followed by

NGC2024, the flame nebula

OTA: Celestron NexStar 8 GPS @ f/7.(something)

Camera: QHY8 OSC

Guiding: William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD + DSI-C + PHD

Imaging: MaximDL/CCD, 7 x 600s (the sky started turning blue), CLS Filter

Processing: DeepSkyStacker, ImagesPlus, Photoshop CS2 + Noel Carboni's Astro Tools

Note: The image is somewhat ruined by the reflection doughnut at the lower right, and a fainter one top left

I also have an IC1396A that i`m not overly happy with (so I wont post it), and a red blob against a blue sky thats suppsoed to be Mars... I think I`ll stick to Deep Sky stuff for now

[SteveL]

(So much for the "I`m not sleep deprived!"... I posted it in the wrong section )

Sorry!

[centroid]

Must be telepathically linked Steve.

Yours is a very much wider FOV than mine, and has made for a very nice result.

Dave

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Fabulous stuff Steve as usual. Never had a bash at that M78, I'll have to go look it up.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[barkis]

That's more excellent stuff from you Steve. M78 is a rare one alright. Your imaging has reached a whole new level since you introduced that new camera. To top it all off, get an OB. mate. Just sneak one past the wife.

[SteveL]

Obsy...i wish...

anyway, here is the Elephant Trunk from last night. Think I trained PHD when it was a bit blustery, because I was having a lot of N/S elongation of the stars, which went away when I retrained before the two images above.

[CELESCOPE]

Nice results Steve , like M78 that has drawn out alot of rather good detail mate ,the flame looks good , but that darn star always gives it a noisey outcome , but still a nice image

Rog

[barkis]

This trunk is starting to look a whole new animal. What with Martin's masterpiece, and now this.

Just astonishing stuff.

Ron.

[SteveL]

Gotta love the long winter nights....

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Nice trunk Steve. I think it looks awesome in colour.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[SteveL]

Thanks, but i`m still not happy with it. If you look closely at the stars, they are elongated, and so i have lost the finer detail in the Ha regions. Its never going to be anywhere near as good as Martin's version, so I will be returning to this object as soon as I can to try something different with it.

[MikeD]

All three are first class.

Love the scale of the flame.

A great nights work.

Mike.

[SteveL]

Thanks Mike. I realised early last week that most of my "good" stuff recently has been widefield with the WO66, so I decided to push the NS8GPS to see what I could get out of it. With such a large imagng chip, and the 8" SCT + FR running at ~f/7, getting enough light onto the QHY8 means LONG subs (and lots of them), and the CLS filter makes that even more important (blocking ~50% of the light). Next time out, I`ll be trying the UHC-S filter to see how that copes with the light pollution, and also to see if it lets in more light than the CLS.

Also, I`ve been using a few new image processes that I havent used before. You cant bin a OSC camera, but you can colour bin the images in ImagePlus, and that helps a great deal. Better SNR, so less noise when you start stretching it. Also, deconvolution is just amazing on the NS8GPS images, it bring out so much detail. Also, the quick sharpening/contrast "bodge" by using a seperate layer as an overlay and using a high pass filter on that layer really brings a lot of stuff out. Try it: Take an image, copy it, paste it as a new layer, set the layer type to "overlay", set transparency on that layer to ~50%, then apply a high pass filter to the new layer. Quite remarkable what it can do.

Am about to look at the different stacking options as well, just to see what they do to an image.

[Martin 2]

Steve , your images are amazing mate, always look for your posts and never disappointed

M2

[SteveL]

Thats cos I only post the images I`m happy with, and keep very quiet about those "oh FFS! what else can go wrong" kind of nights There have been several lengthy imaging sessions where the final image was just pants, but I learned from those, and use the experiences learned to do better next time out.

[barkis]

Steve, I can't find FFS in the Internet Acronym dictionary. Wot's it mean? :D

[SteveL]

[Casus belli]

Steve, I can't find FFS in the Internet Acronym dictionary. Wot's it mean? :D

Its means Fabulous Fotos? Sertianly! BTW Lovely images

[MartinB]

Great work Steve. I love the reflection neb you can really see the dark dust clouds, very dramatic.

I use the high pass filter loads. One refinement is to use a layer mask with it. Under layers select layer mask and then hide or reveal all. You can then use the brush tool to draw in the bits you want hiding or revealing. You can adjust this by changing the opacity of the brush. PS is just brill

[SteveL]

mmm... thats interesting. Time to dig out that WACOM tablet I have somewhere