First outing with Lodestar + RGB filters

[RobertI]

Had a very quick session tonight to test the my filterwheel and RGB filters. Very happy with the initial results despite the short exposures. Looking forward to trying some other types of object.

I didn't do any colour adjustment in Starlight Live and didn't use the luminance filter.

M103 - five exposures each of R,G & B at 5 seconds. I plan to assess the colours using Martin's excellent thread on M103 a few weeks ago. I saved the FITS file and so I can do some playing in Starlight Live.

MGC869 - four exposures each of R,G & B at 5 seconds.

Any comments appreciated.

Rob

[Ruud]

Lots of noticeably different colours here! Congrats on these results.

[Dave In Vermont]

Very nice indeed! I'm partial to colours though. I don't think I'd be happy living on the Moon as there's no air to allow the refraction and elucidation of the colour we see here on Earth.

Great images - thanks for sharing these!

Colourful Skies,

Dave

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Lovely colours.

[Martin Meredith]

Lovely result Rob. I know open clusters are said to be better in the eyepiece, but the ability to produce sharp stars and colour variation in a minute or so like you've done is really great. Short exposures are key, as I learned from HiloDon. Re colour balancing, I found that once I'd set it, I didn't need to change it. I hope you find the colour data I reproduced useful. It's amazing how much the colour changes across images of the same object I found on the web...

Are you using a motorised or manual filter wheel? 

Martin

[RobertI]

Thanks Martin. It's good to know that the colour balance doesn't need to change once set. Yes I also found that example images on the had very different colours, so the colour analysis charts in your original post will be a great help.

I am using a Xagyl USB powered filter wheel which works really well. The filterwheel software runs as a separate app and you switch to it and press a button (1-5) to change filters and switch back to SL, no integration with SL Yet. The only thing i found with multispectral was that you have to be on the ball to pause the exposure run after the chosen number of exposures has completed for rg or b, it would be useful to be able to specify a number of exposures in Starlight Live and it auto pauses while you switch filters. But overall much simpler than I expected and no additional hassle really. It's actually quite exciting seeing the final colour appear with the last filter.

My first effort was actually on M97, but it was low down and I was getting quite a gradient, 30 second exposures seemed to be causing some tracking problems and I also used the luminance which was possibly washing out the colour. Anyway was not happy with it, I may post it if I can remember how I produced it!

Rob