M 97 Owl Nebula

[bigdee]

Here is my go at the Owl Nebula. 

Taken last night with my 8 R C and modded Nikon D3200.

27 x 150 second subs with darks and bias. No flats....the image didn't look right with them added.

There seems to be a brighter haze around the center and to the left. I think this may have been the moon.

Chris.

[JemC]

Very nice capture Chris,

better than my first attempt,

James

[laudropb]

Nice image.

[bigdee]

Thank you James and Laudropb. 

[wimvb]

Very nice image, despite the flats not working.

You may be able to flatten the image in a suitable processing software. In PixInsight that would be DBE. I don't use Photoshop, but I know it can handle this too.

[bigdee]

Thanks Wimvb . I've still much to learn on the processing side.. I will have another go at this. I think I need to retake the flats also.

Chris

[Brent]

Great image Chris, one of my favourite objects (of which I am re-processing one at the moment!) I hope you don't mind but thought I'd have a quick go at a software flat on it. Not ideal working with jpegs instead of raw but you get the idea.

[bigdee]

Hi there.

That looks much better. And no, I don't mind at all.

I'm unsure which software to use for processing.  I have basic photoshop and light room 5. Not the paid versions though.

I've just been looking at one called startools . It's sounds OK and reasonably priced. Do you know of this? What programme do you use?

Chris.

[Brent]

Hi Chris, I actually used Photoshop Touch on my phone for this as I'm in bed () but would usually use Photoshop CS4 on the desktop.

I'm not sure what the limitations of the free Photoshop are but this is pretty basic and easy to do.

Funnily enough, I do use  StarTools. I haven't bought the full version yet but will be doing so in a month or two. Here's one I posted a couple of days ago, just a very short run on M63 > M63 processed in StarTools

Hope that helps.

By the way, what mount are you using and were you guiding?

[bigdee]

Hi Brent 

I used photoshop on my phone also. I don't think I fully understand how it works yet though.

I will check out Startools when I'm home tomorrow  (at work now)

The M63 is nice. I've done this myself but find it so small. I need to try again now with the longer FL of the 8 RC.

Chris

[Brent]

Yes, that will do the job on it. My M63 is actually a huge crop with a 3x drizzle as my focal length is only 750mm. I would eventually like a long fl scope but I'd need a major upgrade of the mount first! 

[bigdee]

I use a NEQ6 on my homemade pillar. It's solid. I should have an autoguider by the weekend so I can increase my exposure times. Imy hoping this improves the images.

[Brent]

It definitely will, the addition of an autoguider was the single standout purchase in improving my image quality (although closely followed by a light pollution filter!).

Sadly, even when my mount is behaving and autoguiding well, I'm severely sky limited

I can rarely go beyond 4 or 5 minutes and it usually has to be less. 10 minute subs always score much lower than 5 minute ones. A move to outside a red zone would be the next best thing for me, but that isn't going to happen.

I'm going to post a re-process of my M97 from March 2015 sometime today. It was taken with 10 minute subs but I strongly suspect that I would have had better SNR with 4 or 5 minute subs. I think that's probably about the limit for me 99% of the time.

By the way, I'm using a decent monitor now, and looking at your flat fielded image that I posted, I think I may have clipped the black point slightly. That's what doing it on a phone at 1.30am does for your processing!

[bigdee]

Phones aren't the best to process on I think.

I use a badder lp filter on my set up. It has definitely helped. I think I've worked out what the light tinge was. A reflection from the dew shield off the moon. The dew shield is homemade and not black or flocked. Another job for the week end as well as learning how to guide.