First with CCD - M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

[russp]

First Image out of my (new to me) Atik 314L+ colour camera - processed in PixInsight - Any tips to improve appreciated, can see I have some way to go but it's a start at least - 17 600sec lights, 30 bias, 5 Darks, 8 flats.

[ollypenrice]

Good start.

Here we see some stellar artefacts which are hard to analyze just from the posted JPEG. Stars have hard edges and some appear 'cut in half.' If these are not artefacts confined to the SGL presentation then they could arise from some of the following:

Focus out. (I think it is, slightly. Did you use the FWHM in Artemis Capture? It's excellent. Try three second subs, bin 1, and make sure the star is below 65000 ADU during the focus.)

Sharpening or deconvolution applied globally to the image. (I always exclude stars from sharpening.)

An imperfect anti-aliasing setting. (Anti-aliasing prevents the creation of exaggerated artificial boundaries.)

Both images would benefit from green noise removal so either 'SCNR green' in Pixinsight or the free Hasta La Vista Green from Rogelio's Deep Sky Colors website would do it.

Olly

[russp]

Good start.

Here we see some stellar artefacts which are hard to analyze just from the posted JPEG. Stars have hard edges and some appear 'cut in half.' If these are not artefacts confined to the SGL presentation then they could arise from some of the following:

Focus out. (I think it is, slightly. Did you use the FWHM in Artemis Capture? It's excellent. Try three second subs, bin 1, and make sure the star is below 65000 ADU during the focus.)

Sharpening or deconvolution applied globally to the image. (I always exclude stars from sharpening.)

An imperfect anti-aliasing setting. (Anti-aliasing prevents the creation of exaggerated artificial boundaries.)

Both images would benefit from green noise removal so either 'SCNR green' in Pixinsight or the free Hasta La Vista Green from Rogelio's Deep Sky Colors website would do it.

Olly

Thanks Olly - sharpening is very likely an issue - I'll go back and try that masking out the stars - Yes forgot to do SCNR ... doh!  Focus was set using the frame and focus module in Sequence Capture Pro - think I was using 1 sec at bin3x3 - found a star and adjust until the HFR was as low as it would go. Didn't knowingly adjust any anti-aliasing setting.

[nytecam]

Excellent result and nice to have a decent image scale - well done :-)

[russp]

Grrr. updated flickr picture and it lost the link here --- with green removed