All is not well with my RC8

[kirkster501]

Wanted to get a closer look on M101 and frankly I am disappointed with what I got with over five hours of data.  This is a quick mash up of what i got and of course needs more work.  But it does not look good to me and looks "mushy".  Collimation seems OK in daylight.  And focus was bang on.  

Appreciate thoughts please?  I can't be wasting precious nights and not getting the results I want.  Those 5 inch plus refractors do look nice!

[knobby]

Looks better with a bit of level tweaking

I like it !

[knobby]

Actually ... no, I've just made it noisier 

[Tinker1947]

Thats not so bad after a tweak......

[kirkster501]

Man, what did you do? Thanks, looks a lot better.   Maybe the slightly blobby stars is down to my guiding - using guidescope. I did reduce the scope as well.  I got a ton of Ha too but not used that yet.

Steve

EDIT: Also maybe I am being a bit unreasonable and expecting Takahashi standards....

[r3i]

Hi Steve,

I had a go over the last couple of nights with my RC8 on M101, but the raw shots don't look great either.  However I think this is down to the seeing conditions rather than the scope:  the Moon is washing out DSOs, the sky hasn't been crystal clear up here and finally the LP from Teesside isn't helping either.  I think M101 has a low surface brightness so it probably needs a lot of exposures to get the SNR as good as possible.

[AstroAdam]

M101 is not the easiest object.  Any moon present = washout.  Definitely keep this one for the darker nights....

[ollypenrice]

Maybe you could put the stacks into Dropbox? As above, I'd avoid the moon, though. Galaxy structure is all about contrast and that's what the moon destroys.

Olly

[knobby]

Man, what did you do? Thanks, looks a lot better. Maybe the slightly blobby stars is down to my guiding - using guidescope. I did reduce the scope as well. I got a ton of Ha too but not used that yet.

Steve

EDIT: Also maybe I am being a bit unreasonable and expecting Takahashi standards....

just pulled the black point in using levels and tweaked the contrast a tad...

Photoshop CS5

[kirkster501]

The moon was setting at the time, but you guys could be right, maybe it was still washing out what is already a very faint object.  It was not a perfect night either, with a very high haze and perhaps this refracting the light about a bit and mushed out the image.  I will try again with no moon at all.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Steve

[AstroAdam]

The moon was setting at the time, but you guys could be right, maybe it was still washing out what is already a very faint object. It was not a perfect night either, with a very high haze and perhaps this refracting the light about a bit and mushed out the image. I will try again with no moon at all.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Steve

Sounds like a combo of all of the enemies of deep sky imaging