M3. Atik 414ex & SW80ED - the happy couple.

[MattJenko]

Here is the globular cluster M3. It was perfectly placed for me last night when the clouds cleared late on to try out a few things, including an automated meridian flip (didn't work) and to run automated until dawn (almost worked).

I woke to find a nicely parked scope and a full set of images and some half decent tracking, but I was a bit dismayed to find the Green channel was more out of focus that the rest. I tried a few processing tricks to tighten up the stars, but it was all very unsatisfactory until I realised I had captured Lum as well, so did a division of the inverse of Blue + Red and lo and behold, got a half decent green channel out of it. All processing done in PixInsight.

Skywatcher ED80 Pro, HEQ5, Atik 414ex.

12 x 5 min L, R, B.....

[ollypenrice]

Lovely resolution but some of the stars are very magenta owing to the green shenannegins. Worth a reshoot of green? Green's a funny colour in AP. You rarely see it as itself (certain planetaries excepted) but it somehow holds the balance of power!

Olly

[MattJenko]

Thanks Olly. It comes as no surprise to me to realise that in matters green, you are right. The image is on the pastel purple side. I took advantage of a clear night last night, and after taking some subs from a nearby globular (M53), I revisited M3 for the green channel. Managed a much nicer looking set than the generated one used earlier. The results are below. Once again: