M74 with a moddified QHY8L

[David_Pickles]

At last - a clear night!

This is my first attempt at M74, which at Mag 9.8 (according to AstroPlanner) is one of the dimmer objects in the Messier Catalogue. It is the result of 15 x 300s exposures, taken from my garden in Somerset using my QHY8L (with a clear nose piece - no IR cut) and Hutech IDAS P2 LPS filter, attached to my Sky-Watcher Explorer 190MN Pro and mounted on a NEQ6 Pro. Guiding was done with a Starlight XPress Lodestar and PHD. Images were captured using QHY's bundled EZCAP software. Pre-processing and stacking was done in Nebulosity 3, with final processing done in Photoshop CS6.

M74 - Spiral Galaxy by Judge.pickles123, on Flickr

[symesie04]

Lovely capture, reminds me of days collecting fossils down at Lime Regis

[sloz1664]

Hi David,

Very nice capture on a faint object and nicely processed.

One question, why remove the IR filter?

cheers

Steve

[David_Pickles]

Hi David,

Very nice capture on a faint object and nicely processed.

One question, why remove the IR filter?

cheers

Steve

In comparison to my modded DSLR, I felt that the QHY8L wasn't as sensitive. I completely removed the IR filter in my DSLR and used the Hutech IDAS P2 LPS filter to reduce light pollution - this filter also has an IR cut, but I think it was far better than the standard IR filter in the camera. I had the same issue with the QHY8L, so felt the Hutech would be a better solution than using the standard filter. In addition, I had noticed some blooming of bright stars and read somewhere on this forum that it may be caused by internal reflection, due to the IR filter. So, after contacting QHY I thought I would give the clear glass option a go and I have to say that I prefer the results, although than it just my personal preference.

[symesie04]

Would be interesting to see some direct comparison. Dont know if you have some previous you have shot with it that you might think about revisiting and therefore making a comparison.

[David_Pickles]

Would be interesting to see some direct comparison. Dont know if you have some previous you have shot with it that you might think about revisiting and therefore making a comparison.

Symesie04 - Unfortunately I haven't any direct comparisons to hand, apart from my images of M42, although there are a number of other differences that make comparison of the final images unfair - check my images Judge.pickles123 on Flickr.

[Russe]

Nice - I've just added another 4 hours to 11 hrs of data. Was imaging with a Canon450D at ISO800 first two nights 300s subs - last night 600s. Can't wait to process things...