M27 from Sunday night at Kelling

[red dwalf]

glad i decided to stay an extra night at Kelling, tried my first steps into guiding which i had not been looking forward to as i thought i would be a nightmare to learn and more things to go wrong.

now i have ventured into guiding i`m kicking myself i didn`t try it a long time ago as i found it very easy to use.

I had one other target before this which i thought was the wizard, but i`m not sure it was, got something redish in the middle of the image, so my second target for the night was the lovely M27,

SCOPE :- Starwave 80 ed doublet

CAMERA:- Canon 1100d fitted with a Astronomik CLS clip filter

CAPTURE SOFTWARE:- APT

MOUNT:- Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro

GUIDE SCOPE:- Skywatcher ST80

GUIDE CAMERA:- Atik Titan

GUIDING SOFTWARE:- PHD

STACKING SOFTWARE:- Deeep Sky Stacker

PROCESSING SOFTWARE:- Photoshop CS3

EXPOSURE TIME:- 10 x 300 second subs with 10 x 300 seconds darks, also took some flats and dark flats but they didn`t seem to add much to the image so processed the image again without them and here is the result.

think i lost alittle of the detail as I saved them as a small jpeg file to make it easier for me to post the images onto the forum.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice capture. I seem to see a very slight colour gradient over the image: from slightly blue-green on the left to slightly red on the right. Is this just me? It should be fairly easy to remove

[red dwalf]

thank you,

you`ll have to help me with the processing tips, another big learning curve, so any tips gratefully recieved, also i`m alittle green and red colour blind which doesn`t help L.O.L.

[davew]

It was rather good that night wasn't it ?

As the target was so high in the sky, did you feel it needed the CLS filter ? Down in the south west and I would have thought yes.

Can you give the processing a little more room on the black slider ? I've downloaded the image to look and the green and blue channels are either clipped or on the verge.

I wish I'd known where you were then I could have come over and admired your rig,

Dave.

[red dwalf]

Thanks Dave,

I wasn't sure if I needed the cos filter or not, maybe not in that fab sky but I did do alittle slewing around that night so thought it couldnt do any.harm, still a learning curve for me and my only first night I had tried guiding.

Would have been great to meet up Dave, i will be on the same pitch in the blue field next year 328 with the east midlands stargazers crowd.

Also I'll be doing sgl next spring.