The meagre result of my efforts last night

[lensman57]

Hi,

After getting my hopes high, seeing the glorious weather forcast of last night, clear skies between 5.00 and 10.00 pm. I set up my gear to image  NGC 6960 in NB . I thought that  1.5 to 2 hours of Ha and Oiii each should get me some decent data before the clouds roll in. In the end I only managed 7 subs of 600s each in Ha, by the time I did the flats for the Ha even the Moon was shrouded in a yellow-orange haze. The following is the result.

WO ZS71 @ f4.7, Atik 314L and a Baader 7nm filter, the Moon and the clouds chasing. Processed in StarTools and PS. Please let me know what you think of this or if  its even worth adding the Oiii to it at all.

Regards,

A.G

[WaveSoarer]

Oh, I think that looks great as it is. Extra data always helps but you've already got a magnificent image.

[Sp@ce_d]

I think you've done well.. Seeing was awful last night... I've just dumped 4 hours of Ha.

Look.. any data is better than no data so it's always worth persevering, this is key to getting better after all... (well that's what I keep telling myself and my long suffering "Telescope Widow")  but If it were me I'd probably wait for better conditions & the moon to be out of the way for OIII though. I find I get a bit of bloat with the same setup as yours.

I looked at StarTools.. It's a bit of a different approach.. in the same way PixInsight is to PS I guess. Not sure if it's the conversion to jpg & uploading to SGL but you're showing a lot of "black dots/holes" which I'm guessing is down to noise reduction techniques? Did you do any calibration? I found the 314L+'s to be really quiet & even using bias seems to have been adding artifacts so I've stopped doing calibration altogether for now.

[robbie c]

I think you got a great image there as well 

[lensman57]

Hi,

I am using the latest Beta of ST at the moment and I think that the  Noise module might have a bug in  there . I will contact IVO regarding. The noise was mainly through shooting right through the high clouds that were there last night and you are 100% correct about seeing, during the focusing at 1s intervals FWHM was 1.12 at one reading and 3.1 at the next, pretty horrid to be sure. Just to give a comparison I took my time with the PI process and here is the best that I can do at the moment with my limited skills. It is just like a different of view. 

Regards,

A.G

[r3i]

Looks good to me. If that's a meagre result then I look forward to your bounteous ones