skywatcher explorer 150p-ds Imaging with the 150P/P-DS

[wimvb]

Two nights in a row with clear skies, and here's what I have to show for it.

M51 under a silvery moon.

SW 150PDS on a SW AZ-EQ6 GT mount

Camera: Pentax K20D (unmoddod) at ISO 400 to keep the noise down

Guiding: SW ST80 + ASI120MM + Lin_guider on Raspberry Pi

19 x 15 minutes + 1 x 47 minutes (!) = 5.5 hours in total

(the 47 minutes exposure wasn't planned; for some reason my camera control program hanged, leaving the shutter open. I forgot to take the image out of the image folder.)

bias, darks (600 seconds exposure time), and flats.

Most exposures were taken before the moon showed itself over the neighbour's house.

Processed in PixInsight

[spillage]

@wimvb your post pushed me to choose m51 last night. Saved all the data to a hard drive this morning so I could process this at work but forgot include my flats and bias so just sat here looking at this till I get home.

its only 300's exposures with the 150pds and 500d.

 

[wimvb]

Looks good. If you use higher iso, you can get away with shorter exposures. I have to use low iso and longer exposures because of high noise in my camera.

M51 has low surface brightness and needs more exposures to reveal its structure. To bring out the tidal trail, you need longer exposures, and preferrably dark skies.

Have fun

[spillage]

So far I have this to show from the 150pds. I need more lights but I am hoping tonight will be clear. Not sure if I should run it through gimp or just leave it as startools spat it out.

 

[spillage]

Also managed this the same night. 12 x 300 iso 800

darks flats bias.

processed in startools 1.4.

 

[wimvb]

Galaxy season, and soon the end of this imaging season.

NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis (now that's a mouth full), is a member of the M81 group of galaxies. It is about 8 milion ly distant, and measures about 50 000 ly across.

It has two reported supernovae, the latest of which (SN2004J SN 2004dj) occured in 2004. The remnant is barely visible in this image (see insert).

Details:

8 x 15 minutes at ISO 400 + 5 x 10 minutes at ISO 800, total time on target just under 3 hours

SW 150PDS on a SW AZ-EQ6

Camera: Pentax K20D (unmodded)

Guiding: ASI120MM + SW ST80 + Lin_guider on Raspberry Pi

Processed in PixInsight

The image suffers from sky glow which is now rapidly getting stronger. One more month and imaging season will be over 'up here', as the nights won't be dark enough. With a little luck, I will just be able to add more data to this before then.

[wimvb]

Trying to kick some life in this thread.

Here's my most recent capture (still a WIP):

NGC 7331 & fuzzies

scope: Skywatcher 150PDS (of course) with Baader coma corrector

camera: ZWO ASI174MM-Cool.

mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6

control and capture software: INDI Ekos/Kstars

no guiding

image stats:

• Lum: 140 x 20 s at -20 C, Gain = 300, collected 18 and 19 October
• RGB: ca 90 x 20 s at -20 C, Gain = 300, collected 18 and 19 October
• About 50 darks, and flats. No bias frames but darkflats

Very basic process in PixInsight (dbe, colour calibration, stretch and LRGB combination followed by unsharpmask)

The camera was in a different orientation the second night, so I had to crop the edges more than I wanted.

 

[Gerry Casa Christiana]

Great scope!

[Gerry Casa Christiana]

Here are a couple of mine with this excellent scope. All on a Skywatcher 150pds and a Canon 550d the last picture is the same camera and only picture I've done since it's modified

Gerry

[Gerry Casa Christiana]

On 09/11/2016 at 18:12, spillage said:

Just purchased myself one of these scope as an upgrade from my c6-n should have it by Monday. Do you all use a coma corrector or can you make do without for a while.

Next on the list is to upgrade my mount. Just trying to make sure I spend the money I have where needed most.

 

Yes you will need a coma corrector to flatten the field for good images. Ah yes more money!

[spillage]

I managed for ages without one and just choose smaller target and cropped the images as much as I could.

[wimvb]

3 hours ago, Gerry Casa Christiana said:

Here are a couple of mine with this excellent scope. All on a Skywatcher 150pds and a Canon 550d the last picture is the same camera and only picture I've done since it's modified

Gerry

Great images. The astromodification made all the difference for the nebulae.

Regarding the M51 image, two observations. 1. In the posted image, there's a weird pattern of short black lines running across the image. Is this visible in the original as well? It can't be optical, because the lines are too small and well defined. You have to pixelpeep to see it. 2. Focus was slightly off when collecting the subs. The double parallell diffraction spikes are a telltale sign. Spider vanes work like a focusing mask. Defocus first widens the spikes, and then doubles them (rather, enhances the edges of the single spikes).

Great image nonetheless.

[Gerry Casa Christiana]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

Great images. The astromodification made all the difference for the nebulae.

Regarding the M51 image, two observations. 1. In the posted image, there's a weird pattern of short black lines running across the image. Is this visible in the original as well? It can't be optical, because the lines are too small and well defined. You have to pixelpeep to see it. 2. Focus was slightly off when collecting the subs. The double parallell diffraction spikes are a telltale sign. Spider vanes work like a focusing mask. Defocus first widens the spikes, and then doubles them (rather, enhances the edges of the single spikes).

Great image nonetheless.

Ah yes I put the wrong M51 in! That was one i processed with Nebulosity but with the evaluation software hence the lines. I'll find the right one!