Very Poor Ring Nebula - 2013-07-13

[Stargazer33]

Hi,

I'm still having trouble getting my CG-5 GT to track accurately and so I'm having to push my camera (Canon 1100D) to 6400 ISO in order to limit the exposure to 30" so as to limit the amount of star trailing. Consequently the images aren't very sharp.

Also, DSS seems to be having trouble locating enough stars to stack the RAW files, so I have had to use Photoshop 7 to manually stack the JPG files as this can't seem to read the CR2 RAW files! Are you still following, or have you given up the will to live yet?!?

Anyway, here is the result of a very frustrating evening imaging the Ring Nebula - M57 in Lyre.

This is a stack of 9 frames, done manually in PS7 with a bit of level correction and some curves.

Equipment:

• Imaging: C8 XLT, CG-5 GT, Revelation Superfocus 2" R&P Dual Speed Focuser, Canon 1100D (unmodified), 1.25" UHC filter.
  

• Guiding: Travelscope 70, Orion StarShoot AutoGuider, PHD - (the guiding doesn't appear to be working as the dec trace shoots straight off the bottom of the graph!).
  

Any suggestions, other than give up and take up golf instead , would be greatly appreciated!

[Carl Reade]

I take it you had the UHC filter on?

[Stargazer33]

Yep!

I was going to use my Baader Neodymium filter too, to cut down the light pollution; but as it is an IR cut filter too I didn't want to loose too much of the red wavelengths.

[Carl Reade]

The first time I took a shot of the Ring I had a similar result using a UHC. UHCs do tend to make stars disappear, maybe try without and see what you get?

[Stargazer33]

Ah! Thanks Carl, I will try that and see what I get.

I also worked out that my mount is way overloaded. The CG-5 is recommended at 7 kg for imaging and my rig is 9.2 kg!