Cats Eye and Dumbbell Neb with ASI120

[long_arms]

Hello  ,

I thought I'd do some unguided deep sky last night!

Skywatcher 200p f/5. ASI120MM. Unbinned. Unfiltered. 

First I went for the Cats eye nebula. Its so small! I stupidly lowered the gain and went for longer exposures. Seeing may have blurred some detail.

Lots of 5 sec exposures stacked in Autostakkert. 

Then I turned to the Dumbbell nebula. 13 second exposures with 80% gain stacked in DSS. Calibrated with darks. I'll need to go longer tonight for the fainter detail 



I also got some more data of the Ring Nebula. A faint galaxy is just starting to show on the right!



I've got R+G for this and it looks good! Just need blue now for a real LRGB with the ASI. 

These were all unbinned but different drizzles/cropping/downscaling/processing means random sizes, sorry   

All comments really appreciated thanks! 
 

Dan

[long_arms]

Here's my mockup LRGB Ring Nebula. LRG data combined with a synthetic blue (2G-R). I'll get real blue data next.

Just rough, but I'm already happy. Not bad for an uncooled 1/3" cmos chip unguided imo!


 

[ArmyAirForce]

I've also got an ASI120MM and a SW 200PDS. I've been meaning to do some deep sky with it for months, but the weather hasn't played fair, or when it does, I've not been available to take advantage!

These are really encouraging shots, especially considering the short exposure times. I must get around to this!

[Ibbo!]

nicely done

that cats Eye has got me thinking if I can gt something similar to add to my ccd image

[ArmyAirForce]

What format are you saving the files in? I've been trying AVI's FIT's and TIFF's, and trying to stack with either AS!2 or Deep Sky Stacker. I did M27 and M57 with DSS, but NGC7009, the Saturn Nebula didn't have enough stars for DSS, so that ended up in AS!2.

Any thoughts as to what settings work best?

[long_arms]

Thanks so much for the comments! Its really appreciated  

 

What format are you saving the files in? I've been trying AVI's FIT's and TIFF's, and trying to stack with either AS!2 or Deep Sky Stacker. I did M27 and M57 with DSS, but NGC7009, the Saturn Nebula didn't have enough stars for DSS, so that ended up in AS!2.

Any thoughts as to what settings work best?

Sorry for the late reply! I set it to 16 bit (12bit) mode in firecapture. Then save as Tifs. 
Yeh I've found it very difficult sometimes to stack images from the camera. I found M51 almost impossible so gave up with a very grainy image.  AS!2 can sometimes do a good job. 
If I'm really desperate to get images aligned I calibrate frames in DSS (output a calibrated FIT). Then align the frames in IRIS. I can then stack in DSS without it aligning them. 

Dan