The 30 Minute Challenge

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Here's a quick trio of Andromedas (Andromedians?) I've just processed.

8 minute Andromeda (8 x 1 minute subs) taken with my Canon 1100D on a William Optics short focal length refractor.

1 Minute Andromeda snapped with my 250mm zoom lens at f5.6 on a modded Canon 100D.

A 20 second effort with my 135mm Super-Takumar at f3.5 on the modded 100D.

Used the noise reduction feature in Canon Digital Photo Professional to cut out the worst of it.

[wxsatuser]

Glad to see this thread still going.

One from me.

Comet Jacques and IC 1396 plus the Garnet Star.

This is just a 300sec RAW file no processing at all.

Canon 60Da EF 200mm L  f4.5 ISO 1600

[toxic]

Pesky forecast - they never did clear and things got worse and worse so I packed in. 

John

NGC7830-600.png

nice capture. i hav'nt had the opportunity for the same reason as you but cant wait to have a go at this one.

[Kirscovitch]

20x90 lights

20 Dark

40 Bias

Processed in DSS and Elements 12

[uhb1966]

Here's another Double Cluster, but I post this as a warning to everyone...

Don't Forget To Focus - Your Images Will Suffer If You Don't...!!!!!

DoubleCluster-Final.jpg

The image is 5x300s subs with darks, flats & bias. HEQ5, ED80 with Focal Reducer, modded 60D and a IDAS D1 Light Pollution Filter.

Oh yes... if i only had rerad it before yesterday... 400 x 8 secs Light for the recycle bin.... buhuuuuuuu

[laser_jock99]

A quick M42 from yesterday morning.

M42 single 300s sub 12" F4 Newtonian scope, Fuji S5 Pro DSLR, dark sky site in Mid Wales

[uhb1966]

A quick M42 from yesterday morning.

M42 single 300s sub 12" F4 Newtonian scope, Fuji S5 Pro DSLR, dark sky site in Mid Wales

W-O-W !!!

Is your Fuji modded or unmodded?!

[laser_jock99]

W-O-W !!!

Is your Fuji modded or unmodded?!

My S5 Pro is unmodded- the Orion Nebula is bright enough for any camera to record soemthing.

I have the factory made UV-IR astro ready version called a Finepix IS Pro which I also use for AP work.

[uhb1966]

Thanks! It looks incredibly 'natural' !

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thinking about it all my recent images qualify for this thread, I've tried some longer runs but dew, cloud and dodgy tracking have intervened. Here's a couple I haven't posted before.

10 minutes on NGC 7822 in cepheus at 135mm/f3.5 with a modded 100D. I came across this nebula when browsing a scrollable panorama of the Milky Way and decided to have a quick go at imaging it. This nebula seems to be overlooked despite its large size and moderate brightness.

Cassiopeia at 50mm, about 24 minutes with my unmodded 1100D. Tried 4 minute subs on this one but there doesn't seem to be enough data to get any natural looking colour out of it, so I kept it almost monochrome.

[Uranium235]

3x600 on the Heart (130pds):

[laser_jock99]

Another 'shortie'- North America Nebula Cygnus. Single unguided 159s sub with TS Optics 6" F4 Newt (fitted with 0.7x corrector/reducer to work at F2.9). Camera was a Fuji IS Pro DSLR @ ISO3200. Dark sky site in Mid Wales

[Kirscovitch]

Single sub of Andromeda with the 1100D EF75-300mm at 80mm

119 seconds f/4 ISO 800

[MattJenko]

M13. 20 x 60 second subs using an unmodded Canon 1100

[toxic]

M-1

1-600 sec HA

1-600 sec Olll

1-600 sec S2

and 1 very happy chappy 

combined in ps with annie's astro actions /levels/color corections

[laser_jock99]

M33 Galaxy Triangulum- single 600s sub, 12" F4 scope, Fuji S5 Pro DSLR @ ISO1000

[wxsatuser]

Ursa Major.

Canon 600D 10secs @ ISO 3200 Sigma 17/50mm zoom @ 17mm

Loads of LP, a contrail and clouds. 

[Hawkeye]

So after about of year of struggling to get everything working at the same time last Saturday I finally got so reasonable data...

So here are my submissions to the 30 minute challenge..

Equipment used as follows:-

Mount:- HEQ5 Pro

Scope:- SW200P

Guiding:- SW 50mm Finder guider and QHY5Lii

Software:-

APT for capture of data

PHD2 for quiding

Nebulosity 3 and photshop CS3 for processing.

Results:-

M45, 12*120s lights, darks, flats and bias frames (total 24 minutes)

[Hawkeye]

M1, 5*300s lights, darks, flats and bias frames (total 25 minutes)

[Hawkeye]

NGC869 (Double Cluster), 8*120s lights, darks, flats and bias frames (total 16 minutes)

[Hawkeye]

and finally (the one I like the best)

M42, 8*120s lights, darks, flats and bias frames (total 16 minutes)

[RichM63]

Nice work Hawkeye, I'm also at around the 1 year to collect the kit, now it seems that I've got another year to go, to figure out how to use it.

Question: in the M45 and M42 to a lesser degree, why do the diffraction spikes seem to reverse left to right once past the approximate center of the image? (notably the 4pm/8pm long spike).

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Good to see this thread has some traction again. Nice images Hawkeye but the first three look very purple to me, I think they'd benefit from a bit of colour balancing.

[Hawkeye]

Nice work Hawkeye, I'm also at around the 1 year to collect the kit, now it seems that I've got another year to go, to figure out how to use it.

Question: in the M45 and M42 to a lesser degree, why do the diffraction spikes seem to reverse left to right once past the approximate center of the image? (notably the 4pm/8pm long spike).

Hi Rich, I am still looking at buying more gear, 1st thing is a reasonable imaging scope and then a new camera.... and then another year to work out how to use them 

As for the diffraction spikes, TBH I hadn't noticed it until you said, but I am guessing it will either be due to a poorly collimated scope or it could be caused by my home made secondary dew heater which does not fit very well   but if someone on here does know what is actually causing it please let me know!

[Hawkeye]

Good to see this thread has some traction again. Nice images Hawkeye but the first three look very purple to me, I think they'd benefit from a bit of colour balancing.

Hi Knight of Clear Skies,

The purple comes from the processing in Nebulosity 3..

I am not sure of the correct DeBayer settings I should be using for my Canon 1000D. The only way I can get the images to have any colour at all is to off set the matrix which makes the image go purple (ish), every other setting leaves the image grey.... Again if anyone knows what settings I should be using I would be really grateful for the advice.....

Was just so glad to get some images produced that I was actually willing to post on here