Clear skies finally, and M16 Ha

[SteveL]

The last few months have been extremely frustrating. I`ve been out 3 times since the 23rd April, and I have been going stir crazy.

But finally, the high pressure is building, the weather is warming up, and it fells almost like Summer. A bit hazy last Wednesday, and the moon coming up later didnt help matters, but the seeing was very stable.

I had both systems out last Wednesday because I wasnt sure how the skies would turn out.

... but in the end, I used the EQ6/C11 combination to grab a target I was looking foreard to imaging. Its a bit noisey, certainly could do with some more time spent on it, but i`m more than happy with the way the new C11 setup works for imaging

OTA: C11 @ f/6.3 (or thereabouts)

Guiding: SW ED80 + DSI-C + PHD (via EQMOD)

Ha Imaging: QHY8 + MaximDL, 9 x 300s (lost 3 of the 12 subs to the seeing), Astronomik 13nm Ha filter

Stacked: DeepSkyStacker

Post Process: ImagesPlus + PSCS2 + Noel Carboni’s AstroTools

(Click on image for larger version)

Now compare this to last years efforts (oddly, its exactly a year between these two images!) which was taken with the C8 and an unmodified Canon 350D.

[barkis]

Well Steve, you were threatening to unleash this one and it was worth the wait. It looks like you can have little doubt as to the potential of the C11 setup. That has to be very satisfactory considering there's only 45 minutes worth. I'm not the best judge, but it sure does it for me.

There is an awful lot more compared to to DSLR image, but that is to be expected is it not.?

Bet you are just over the moon just to be amongst it again.

Ron.

[Roy Batty]

Nice one Steve

It just goes to show the difference between a dedicated astro CCD and a DSLR.

As a matter of interest though, do you remember how much data your DSLR image amounted to?

Unfortunately this one's now too low to my southerly horizon to get a decent crack at, well done and good to see your back in the saddle.

cheers

RB

[SteveL]

As a matter of interest though, do you remember how much data your DSLR image amounted to?

The DSLR image above was created using 6 x 600s @ ISO800

[MartinB]

That's fantastic Steve, the image scale is good and you've got some fantastic sharp detail

[Beyond_Vision]

Thats looking very good Steve bet you were glad to catch some sky at last. As a matter of interest was the older picture done without a focal reducer is has it been cropped?

Regards

Kevin

[SteveL]

Kevin, a bit of both I think... cropped from a C8 f/10 image, and resized as well.