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Stephans Quintet - Helix Nebula - NGC281 (130pds)


Uranium235

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Wow.... Sunday night was a good one. Perfectly clear with no Moon (now, theres a novelty!).

I couldnt really decide on what to go for, so just muddled my way through the night really. Starting off with some galaxy stuff (had to take advantage of the conditions), after a couple of hours on that I spotted that the Helix was in its only available part of the sky from my location, so I had to act fast and grab it while I can (I only get a 45min window). Processing that is a mare becuase of the gradients picked up with it being so low in the sky.

Finally, I moved on to NGC281 to see if I could get some more colour done in a single night. So I did 2.5hrs in Ha, then an hour in OIII.

I had figured on setting up tonight, but its turned into a bit of a pea-souper out there so better not!

Thanks for looking! :)

Rob

Stephans Quintet:

15x600 (L)

15684376928_617f162210_b.jpg

Fullsize here:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7468/15684376928_007c80c830_o.jpg

NGC7293 Helix Nebula:

6x300 Ha 1x1bin, 6x120 OIII 2x2bin

15684399088_bb46f910dc_b.jpg

NGC281 Pacman

10x900 Ha 1x1bin, 10x450 OIII 2x2bin

15871960815_33b48f1784_b.jpg

Fullsize here:

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8645/15871960815_eeb912a3d6_o.jpg

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Great images and some really cool targets. You certainly manage to get your processing done promptly as well!. I thought I was doing well to get my two images quickly done from Sunday and through the fog last night but they really are just crude first processing passes, certainly not as lovely as these.

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You have completely sold me on the 130pds....SKYWATCHER!!, get this man some sponsorship!

Haha :D

I Wish!

Rob

Great images. How many hours of processing did they take? I had always assumed the images of this quality took many many hours of processing (and eye wateringly expensive kit).

Paul

Thanks Paul! I spent most of yesterday evening processing that lot (took about four or five hours). The main challenge being getting binned OIII stars to look good - I found that simply resizing the 2x2 .tiff to 150% in Ps gives you dodgy stars. The solution was to use the "double size" command in Maxim, then take it back to Ps and reduce its scale by 25%. So, this meant both Ha and OIII master met halfway (Ha reduced by 25%. OIII enlarged by 150%).... if that makes sense!  :)

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Rob

This processing thing is a bit of an art form!! I am amazed that you can process 3 quality images in one evening.

I am assuming that it takes more than a bit of practice. But then, so does everything that is worth doing.

Looking forward to seeing your Virgo group images.

Paul

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Give it a go, the Quintet is certainly doable with a DSLR - except it may take quite a few more subs.

I've just discovered a little problem with my flats, which might explain why I had background problems. Basically, the white level in Artemis was telling fibs - so instead of getting the target ADU of 20,000 - I got 38,000. Not a bad difference!

Reshooting them now.

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Great shots!

I find it interesting to see Stephans' Quintet and NGC7331+fleas in the same FOV because both are the result of chance alignments.  NGC 7331 is around 50 million LYs away while the little accompanying 'fleas' are apparently 10 times further way -- just a line-of-sight coincidence. 

And Stephan's Quintet is around 5-7 times as far away as NGC7331. Except for one of the quintet, which is at a similar distance to NGC7331... again, just a coincidence.

Martin

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Gosh, you work quickly! That's a whole lot of whizzing about the sky in one night and a marathon of processing the next. Good work! I particularly like the Helix - an elusive target from our back gardens.

Sunday night was a peach though and you made the most of it! I'm yet to even download the subs from my astro laptop to my processing Mac from that night!

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Fantastic stuff Rob.  Particularly like the Helix Nebula - not an easy target from the UK.  Would love to capture it myself sometime...

Not easy is an understatement!

The guiding was very lumpy down that low, so I tried setting PHD to a 5 second exposure in an attempt to calm it down a bit - which improved it slightly. But certainly not the pancake flat graph im used to  :)

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