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Star71 First light - Take 2 (IC1396)


Uranium235

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Now then.... I like it when stuff works, and the replacement Star71 from the team at FLO has done the business :)  Many thanks to them for making this possible!

I was expecting a bit more OIII than I got, its pretty weak to be honest - but then again it wasnt shot under a good sky. In fact, all of the Ha for this was shot under strong moonlight as well, so its not as noise free as I wanted - but still pretty good given the conditions.

Ive whipped up two versions, one standard (red) HOO scheme - and a Cannistra colour version to push the OIII a bit... which was a bit difficult due to the really hard stretch I gave to the data. To avoid any blue halos from that method I put the colour layers together with the stars removed , and did a little clone brushing to remove the worst of the halo remnants. Then a quick dust & scratches filter to smooth the colour out a bit before adding the Ha stack as Lum.

28x900 Ha_L, 8x900 Ha_R, 8x900 OIII G&B

WO Star71, Atik 383L+, NEQ6

Thanks for looking! :)

HOO:

22645290510_0333fbf6dc_b.jpg

Pixel peepers & Corner freaks version here: https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5774/22645290510_59a2cab29e_o.jpg

Cannistra:

22212210223_72b966761d_b.jpg

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Alien 13, on 06 Nov 2015 - 9:31 PM, said:

Great image I am tempted by this scope how much out of the box ready is it?

Alan

This one was good to go straight out of the box(ish). I found that I cant mount it like a normal frac becuase its really back end heavy when you get the camera on there. So I scrounged a long ADM style dovetail from my dual bar and mounted the telescope upside down so the dovetail doesnt foul the focuser (which is what most people seem to have done). I left the original short dovetail on so I could mount the finderguider using the spare vixen saddle from the aforementioned dual bar (it all allen bolts apart, so real easy to switch things around).

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Nice one Rob, that field of view is so large!

I only managed one sub tonight before the clouds rolled in.

One day I'll have a clear night, one day...

I managed a couple of hours in the end, got interrupted by cloud but the subs I got have started to pick up the dust beyond M45. A couple more hours on that and it should look quite nice, perhaps I will get lucky again tomorrow night.

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Really beautiful! Since I have similar stuff in my subs - can that reflection around the Garnet Star be avoided? I get them from all bright stars.

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Unfortunately the Garnet Star is pretty bright, and at the edge of field (double trouble) so its halo cant be avoided - its also present in the Ha subs too so I left it at it was. But im not too bothered by it really, and it not worth potentially ruining the image by trying to process it out. It might improve if I used an Astrodon filter, but theres no way I can justify the expense of one! :)

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Cheers Sara :)  Yep, Im hoping to put it through its paces this Winter. I just done a test stack of last nights M45 data and there are bits of fluff and dust that ive never seen before - its a new take on an old favorite so Im looking forward to hitting it with more data once the weather improves to get the noise down (lets just say its a bit "damp" here @ the mo!).

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Superb. Aesthetically I prefer the first one, but having the second version to bring out the OIII is worthwhile.

Im with you on that one, I prefer the HOO version as well. Perhaps if I bag a couple more hours in OIII I can process it without having to throttle the data so much.

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Good imaging, Rob.

This scope is quite something. So far most images posted here have been in narrowband but Yves (VdB) did a very impressive one with a full format Nikon astro DSLR. I look forward to your M45. I got told off a while back for describing the optics of one medium priced scope as world class (which they were) but I don't think that will happen this time. If I didn't have an FSQ I'd be right in there hitting the 'buy' button on a Star 71.

Olly

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Nice!

There is a new badge of Star 71's that fixes the odd star patterns/spikes maybe you are one that got one of those? 

For comparison, my combo that Olly mentioned;

IC1396 by Yves, on Flickr

Thanks :)

The halos im getting are purely from the narrowband filters I use (Baader 7.5nm), I shot a load of M45 with the Astronomik CCD CLS filter last night and didnt get any halos at all (and the stars contained within that are far brighter than the Garnet Star). It must be something to do with the nature of the filter (being reflective to unwanted light), im not too bothered by it really as its not the fault of the telescope.

The Star71 I got was pretty much fresh off the boat, so its as up to date as it can be. Im guessing the image you attached was LRGB and not NB? Try a Baader NB filter on a bright star, you might find you get the same thing as I do.

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Good imaging, Rob.

This scope is quite something. So far most images posted here have been in narrowband but Yves (VdB) did a very impressive one with a full format Nikon astro DSLR. I look forward to your M45. I got told off a while back for describing the optics of one medium priced scope as world class (which they were) but I don't think that will happen this time. If I didn't have an FSQ I'd be right in there hitting the 'buy' button on a Star 71.

Olly

Thanks Olly, Im up to about three hours in Lum now. But the limitations of my location are starting to show (dust is tough from a town centre location!), a big FOV seems to give plenty of chance for gradients to creep in - plus all those fireworks didnt help, they went on til 11pm last night.... sounded like WW3 out there!

Its just a shame I dont have any RGB filters :(  If I want to add colour I will have to fire up the 1000d, but I dont want to do that until Ive put together some sort of quick change system by converting the FW to a canon bayonet fitting

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