QHY8 camera first light

[Nick Smith]

At last a patch of clear sky to give my "new" (secondhand) camera a run out. Had to go for something bright because of the Moon lack of proper darkness etc.

Had a problem processing these large files in Maxim. If I attempted to combine more than about a dozen subs, Maxim brought up an "out of memory" error message. I've got 1Gb RAM on my system-is that the problem? Any help appreciated.

So, I could only stack 8 60 second subs for this image. C11 at f6.3 ish.

First a 50% reduction of the widefield image

A closer crop of the neb itself (80% resample)

I've got the Hyperstar v3 for the C11 on order, so I'm looking forward to having a bash at some proper widefield stuff later on in the year.

Regards

Nick

[steppenwolf]

Nick, the way around this is to not load the images into memory but to do the processing using a macro (I can tell you how if you need help) and then use the 'combine files' function - this way the processing will not all be done in memory.

[algol]

lovely pic, and center star too

[LostNSpace]

Nice image Nick.....

I had that prob with memory when i 1st started imaging, looks like Steve has come up with the solution for you, for me i ended up buying a new pc......

Hope you get this issue sorted out anyway....

Mark

[SteveL]

Or you could stack them with Deep Sky Stacker...

[MartinB]

Nice 1st light Nick.

Don't know why you had the out of memory problem. I have a pretty old computer which is slow with the big QHY8 files but gets there in the end. I'm assuming you aren't opening all the images at the same time but selecting the images using combine.

One way to speed things up,on a small target like M57, is to open one of the images and record an image crop using the command sequence function. You can then run this action on all your images. Your files will then be much smaller although, obviously, you wont get the wide field.

[Beyond_Vision]

And a very nice first light too. Excellent colour and detail. I still haven't had a satisfactory image with mine and will probablly leave it until the longer nights set in.

Regards

Kevin

[barkis]

Yep!, The QHY8's reputation precedes it Nick. No doubt you've seen some of Stevel'S work with the camera. Of course You have reinforced it's reputation with the Ring Neb. here, and we will be pleased to see you future stuff too. It's a great tool in the right hands.

Cheers.

Ron.

[Aza]

Great first light, have you tried Nebulosity? Thats a great, and cheap, program.

[lunator]

Nick

That is a very good image of M57.

the colours are very well balanced.

Cheers

Ian

[MikeD]

Very nice colour and detail, the ring sits well in the fov of the QHY8.

Mike.

[Saso]

Stunning for first night and with only 8 pictures. Great colours and details. Well done.

[CELESCOPE]

Great shot Nick ,like that one mate , lovely FOV as well

Cheers

Rog

[Nick Smith]

Thanks for the kind (and useful) comments guys!

The "problem" in Maxim is now sorted. I was opening all the files at the same time to convert to colour before combining. Using the "combine files" command works fine.

Thanks

Nick

[Plastic chicken]

Brilliant Nick!!! :hello1:

PC

[Starflyer]

Very nice Nick, I look forward to seeing some more.

Ian

[ncjunk]

Good pic, nice detail in the center and you can just see the galaxy.

NC