The EQ3 DSO Challenge

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Nigel G said:

The weatherman has promised uninterupted clear sky's from 4pm today until 7 am Monday morning, I have stripped and serviced the EQ3 and blown the dust from the scope lens, checked everything over and over, all batterys fully charged and chargers ready. Everything is ready to go  and the clouds are clearing the sun is out.

New bottle of Jura Superstition ready to open.

Its going to be a long weekend  I hope.

I hope you have a similar forecast.

Edit, I'm going to try a few of these wrapped in a tea towel and wrapped around the scope for a temporary dew heater.

Any reason why not before I try it ??

Nige.

One worked for my Tokina 300mm held on by insulation tape.

Night before last I used one on my guidescope, held on by wide masking tape. I didn't use guiding but at the end of the night it was still cold - I think I stopped enough oxygen getting to it to allow it to work. (They work by rusting salty iron in the presence of oxygen and a little bit of moisture)

[Nigel G]

18 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

One worked for my Tokina 300mm held on by insulation tape.

Night before last I used one on my guidescope, held on by wide masking tape. I didn't use guiding but at the end of the night it was still cold - I think I stopped enough oxygen getting to it to allow it to work. (They work by rusting salty iron in the presence of oxygen and a little bit of moisture)

I planned to use 2 wrapped in a lightweight tea towel an held on the scope by an elastic band.

[Stub Mandrel]

I would lose the wrapper. Laccy band is a good idea

[Nigel G]

First night of a long cloudless weekend, went to bed at 1.45am still waiting for the clouds to pass, got up at 4am still cloudy, Sun came out at 8am then quickly hid behind clouds.

 

[wimvb]

29 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

First night of a long cloudless weekend, went to bed at 1.45am still waiting for the clouds to pass, got up at 4am still cloudy, Sun came out at 8am then quickly hid behind clouds.

 

Now, that's a depressing bed time story. Sorry it didn't work out for you. I hope you have better luck tonight.

Monday night is supposed to be a clear night out here, according to the Clear Outside app. Probably the same gap in the clouds that's passing your neck of the woods this weekend. But at the same time it predicts 7% chance of rain on a cloudless night, as oppsed to 0% chance on a 100% clouded night. I wonder who programned that app.

[alacant]

On 13/10/2017 at 10:16, Stub Mandrel said:

The 150PL will make it bigger but I wonder if it will get any more detail?

Hi. I had a go with my nt150L. Can't post here as it's with an eq6 but I'd say it does have the edge on detail. Cheers.

[Nigel G]

Here is a great forecast for tonight, even the dew point will not be reached, hmm well its still total cloud cover atm.

Best thing is not to get your hopes up and end up with great disappointment.

I knew I shouldn't of stripped and serviced the mount.

There's always a positive side to everything, I didn't raise the shutter count on my camera

[Stub Mandrel]

Looks like I should live twenty miles further south :-(

[Peco4321]

Looking good for later, now what shall I go for, uuuummmmm, thinking of a new galaxy so checking Astronomy Now, they had some suggestions for this month. 

[Nigel G]

Last night started very clear then started to slowly mist around 1.30 am. Very misty at 2.30 so packed up, by 3am gin clear, but already packed up.

After the strip service the mount performed great, very smooth, the best yet, 8 minute subs no problem, all keepers.

A DSO I have always struggled with is M31, never get the detail I want, the colours are a nightmare. I have imaged this many times and never been totally happy.

I took 1 hour of 4mins 1 hour of 6mins and 40minutes of 8mins. Total 2H 40m ISO800 non modified 1300d with CLS filter, 80ED, dithered, flats and bias.

Still struggling with colour but the detail is coming, going to try for more tonight, maybe without the CLS filter if its clear.

Took some more on m45 but still has bloated stars, got to process it yet.

2 attempts at processing, just can't get the colours right, although it is my best effort yet. The first image was stacked as long exposures, expected good S-N ratio, a setting in DSS, it seems to have made a difference for the better, showing a little more detail.

Nige.

[Stub Mandrel]

Second one looks better Nige, but I think the colour in number 1 is closer to where you want to get as the puffy bits at each end are showing some blue. you need to steer the pink towards orange.

With the deer lick I conquered the red starting with a colour shift to move towards blue/cyan, then doing a round of 'soft light' saturation boost followed by gently bringing down the red saturation & maybe pushing blue and cyan up a tiny bit, then repeating the sat bosst/red cut several times while an keeping an eye on yellow + magenta so they didn't go OTT

[Filroden]

2 hours ago, Nigel G said:

I took 1 hour of 4mins 1 hour of 6mins and 40minutes of 8mins. Total 2H 40m ISO800 non modified 1300d with CLS filter, 80ED, dithered, flats and bias.

Lovely images. And 8 min exposures  Another advantage of the no darks strategy...I’d have spent 4 more hours collecting darks before I could even process.

[mikey2000]

Nige,  I think my preference lies in between the two.  The first is too red and the second is a little too blue.  Now, I have no idea what colour the galaxy really is (it's just a fuzzy in my scope when I look visually) but I have a feeling it has a warm yellow colour.

 

So, the colour of any astro pic is more or less entirely down to personal taste - it's all to faint for our miserable little human eyes to see.

 

I like the rather clear dust lanes in both of them though.

[mikey2000]

It's clear here tonight!   It's been mostly cloudy for almost as long as I can remember now....  And to top things off, two weeks there was a spate of burglaries up our road.  We weren't directly affected but now my wife is sort of 'unhappy' about me mooching around in the dark in the garden at night.  So, I'll probably only get an hour or two until I need to pack it all away for the night.

 

On a positive note, the police say they are getting close to an arrest.  Nail 'em up!

 

Astronomically speaking, I've got some fairly ropey seeing but the mount seems to be tracking OK with RMS .77 and .7.  I'm aiming straight up at the pac man nebula.  I just hope it isn't too faint for my red-blind camera.....

[Nigel G]

I hope Mikey and Pete had there opportunity to do some imaging, Mikey I hope they catch the [removed word].

I got some more data on M31, 1 hour of 10 minutes and a few other odd exposures totalling 4hours all told.

Still don't like the colours although I think its an improvement, a few aqua blobs to remove but picking up detail, the outer spiral arms are showing better, I can't decide either to add some data from the modified camera or continue with my 1300d next opportunity, any suggestions?

Nige.

[wimvb]

That's getting really good.

To get a significant improvement, you basically need to double the total exposure time ("-ish"). But adding Ha is an entirely new dataset that can lift your image with only a couple of extra hours. And if you want to add Ha in the end any way, why not start now? I would probably go for the modded cam. You have hints of Ha as it is.

[Stub Mandrel]

77 minutes of M33, best of last year's data (60s at iso 1600) plus 12 subs 240s at iso800 cooled from this year.

The scores on the new data are 4,500 - 6000 compared to 3,000 - 5,000 for the old data which is interesting.

I need the old data to let sigma kappa kill the thin haze streak effect.

Hopefully I can get 2-3 hours more on M33 if we get a clear night soon.

 

[mikey2000]

Last night was mostly clear when I set up but it gradually hazed over.  It turns out the last 45 minutes of shooting were merely guiding practice (and nicely successful too - not a single glitch in that entire period).

 

Sadly, the files from that part of the night were worthless.  But, I managed 12x3min before that all closed in.

 

NGC281 Pacman Nebula.

 

I had to work the data quite hard to get the nebula to show and I seem to be stuck with a pinky/magenta cast.

 

It's clear again tonight but rather windy indeed, so I think I'll stay indoors...

[Nigel G]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

77 minutes of M33, best of last year's data (60s at iso 1600) plus 12 subs 240s at iso800 cooled from this year.

The scores on the new data are 4,500 - 6000 compared to 3,000 - 5,000 for the old data which is interesting.

I need the old data to let sigma kappa kill the thin haze streak effect.

Hopefully I can get 2-3 hours more on M33 if we get a clear night soon.

 

 

These galaxy's are hard to capture and process to get detail, I guess it's the enormous distance the photons have to travel,  you certainly done a good job with M33 another one I have struggled with, lovely image, hope you get the clear sky's to continue. 

Nige.

[Nigel G]

11 minutes ago, mikey2000 said:

Last night was mostly clear when I set up but it gradually hazed over.  It turns out the last 45 minutes of shooting were merely guiding practice (and nicely successful too - not a single glitch in that entire period).

 

Sadly, the files from that part of the night were worthless.  But, I managed 12x3min before that all closed in.

 

NGC281 Pacman Nebula.

I had to work the data quite hard to get the nebula to show and I seem to be stuck with a pinky/magenta cast.

 

It's clear again tonight but rather windy indeed, so I think I'll stay indoors...

Great image Mikey,  you captured a lot of nebulosity especially with an unmodified camera,  well done.

bit gusty here to. Watching TV

Nige 

Edited October 16, 2017 by Nigel G

[Nigel G]

A result from last nights imaging. Very windy but mostly protected by a big shed up wind.

A negative result I would say. I took 14x8min subs with my modified camera on M31.

I stacked both batches with flats and bias as 2 groups, total 5 hours 40 mins.

The out come was about the same as my first stack of 2h 40m. much more noise to deal with and detail loss, although the colour was much better to control.

The best and easiest to process so far being 4 hours with the non modified camera, to be honest I have never had much success at galaxys with my modified camera.

DSS scores were higher for the modified camera at 4500 average, non modified scores average 3500.

So I will finish the image with a couple of hours with my non modified cam and leave out the modded subs next chance.

The first image is 2h40m 2nd 4h non mod. 3rd 5h40m both cameras mixed.

I prefer the middle one, with the colours of the 3rd, maybe by adding 1 1200d sub it will help the colours ?

Click on image to see full size.

They look so good as thumbnails  

Cheers

Nige.

 

[Filroden]

42 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

I prefer the middle one, with the colours of the 3rd, maybe by adding 1 1200d sub it will help the colours ?

Can you extract the luminance from the middle and the colour from the right and recombine?

[Stub Mandrel]

Why not use the nice colour one as bottom layer, put the modded image as top layer and choose 'luminance'

[Nigel G]

43 minutes ago, Filroden said:

Can you extract the luminance from the middle and the colour from the right and recombine?

 

9 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Why not use the nice colour one as bottom layer, put the modded image as top layer and choose 'luminance'

I'll have a go, this will be a PS job, not to much experience with it but got to learn some how.

[Nigel G]

Silly question time.

First snag, how do I use a layer from one image to place on another.

I can only seem to layer the image opened in PS, if I open the second image and select new layer it stays with that image if you know what I mean.

I think its research time  

I have managed to blend them in photo merge but have no control over blending amount or type.

PS. I have Photoshop CS2 free version.

Nige.