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NGC 3750 Copeland's Septet

x6gas

By x6gas
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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x6gas

x6gas

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I had the Baby Q on the mount last night to capture some more subs of the Jellyfish Nebula but when that rotated out of view I was struggling to find a suitable target... so I went for an unsuitable one.

This is Copeland's Septet, a grouping of Galaxies in Leo.  Obviously this would have been better with my SCT, but you can make them out (and a couple more besides...)  This is a crop from the centre of the image:

post-11821-0-42005700-1394395734_thumb.p

and here's the whole frame for reference

post-11821-0-63638800-1394395626_thumb.p

I wish I knew how to get the stunning star colour that I often see in other people's images, but can't seem to pull it off!

Scope: Takahashi FSQ85EDX

Mount: CGEM DX

Camera: Atik 490ex

Guiding: IMG0H, Atik OAG, PHD 2

I've switched to PHD 2 and I like the way that you can tweak the calibration settings manually which meant I could deal with a slight imbalance of the scope on the mount.  18 x 300s each of RGB.

Cheers, Ian

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x6gas

x6gas

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Thanks Andy.

I really need to get the SCT on the mount as there is more around for that just now... but I've been having a few issues with my mount so wanted to shake them out before moving to the longer focal length... having pretty much missed the best of Orion from my location due to the weather I'm hoping for good stuff in spring galaxy season!

As it is I'm doing something tonight I very rarely do... and open cluster!  :shocked:

Cheers, Ian

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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New to me and rather intriguing. I wonder who Copeland was. (When I looked up Stéphan he was director of Marseille observatory not too far from here.)

Right, looked him up and it's interesting. Ralph Copeland, 1837 to 1905. He observed with Lord Rosse and probably first saw the septet in the Leviathon, the 72 inch at Parsontown. And now you've caught it in a three inch! Well done.

Not sure what to suggest re star colour but the first thing is to get a good general colour calibration for which I find Pixinsight the clear winner.

Over in Photoshop Noel's Actions then have an 'Increase Star Colour' routine.

Olly

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Shibby

Shibby

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Certainly a challenge for that focal length! But a really nice image of a nice grouping of galaxies, so thanks for posting :)

As Olly says, if you balance the overall colour then the star colours should begin to pop.

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x6gas

x6gas

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That is a nice image. Is it just me or does that cluster in the centre of the full image look like someone holding their hands up? OK just me then.

Thanks!  I can sort of see what you mean, though maybe stretching it a bit!  There was a whole menagerie in a recent image of the Rosette...

New to me and rather intriguing. I wonder who Copeland was. (When I looked up Stéphan he was director of Marseille observatory not too far from here.)

Right, looked him up and it's interesting. Ralph Copeland, 1837 to 1905. He observed with Lord Rosse and probably first saw the septet in the Leviathon, the 72 inch at Parsontown. And now you've caught it in a three inch! Well done.

Not sure what to suggest re star colour but the first thing is to get a good general colour calibration for which I find Pixinsight the clear winner.

Over in Photoshop Noel's Actions then have an 'Increase Star Colour' routine.

Olly

Thanks for the interesting history Olly - I hadn't looked it up.  It looks like it will be worth re-visiting this with the SCT which was one of the reasons for taking a look at what's there...  Pixinsight is beyond me for the moment - both in terms of cost and the overhead of learning how to use it!  I did try Noel's actions but it didn't help.  I have since tried a simple routine outlines by Jerry Lodriguss and that seems to have helped:

post-11821-0-66555500-1394570765_thumb.p

Certainly a challenge for that focal length! But a really nice image of a nice grouping of galaxies, so thanks for posting :)

As Olly says, if you balance the overall colour then the star colours should begin to pop.

Thanks Shibby - can you give me some more advice on how to balance the colours?  I 've used colour balance to set the background so that RGB are all giving a value of 22... so I think I'm missing something!

Nice shot Ian - I'll have to give it a go with my 30cm f/3.3 SCT when next clear - should have done it last night - if I'd read your post :-)

Wow - so you have x 0.33 reducer on your 11"?  I heard that they didn't work all that well - least not on the Celestron scopes - is yours a Meade?  It would be awesome to have an SCT working at that speed, but I guess getting accurate focusing is an issue.  I do have a hyperstar for my SCT but haven't yet given it a try...

Thanks all for the nice comments.  As I said, nice target, wrong scope and I am looking forward to coming back to this one...

Cheers, Ian

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