A bit of a cone

[simmo39]

Hi all, well after storm Doris we had a window of clear sky so I thought I would go out and play. Wish I hadnt though! I couldnt seem to get anything right or run properly! After much stomping about and a few choice words I finally got some images of the Cone Neb. I got about 15  6 min subs of witch only about 8 where of any use. ( lots of star trails! Not sure why though ). Well here is the results, as I said 8 x 6mins at iso 800 taken with a SW 130 pds.

here is a crop.

Hints and tips welcome.

Edited February 25, 2017 by simmo39

[wimvb]

Nice result, despite the mishaps. I think that with some gentle processing, you can lift the nebula a bit more. What software do you use for processing? Both PixInsight and Photoshop can do masked stretching, which stretches the weaker neb more than the stars.

There was an article by Blair MacDonald about this in a previous issue (April 2012) of JRASC (Journal of the Canadian Astronomical Society).

http://rasc.ca/jrasc/recent-issues

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2012JRASC.106...86M

Regarding your mishaps, I had a similar experience last night. Nothing seemed to work, and Ekos/Kstars managed to park my scope right into the mount on two occasions. To top it off, when I set my camera to shoot darks before I went to bed, I forgot to set it to the correct ISO settings. This morning I had 20 10 minute darks at ISO 1600 in stead of ISO 200.

Today during the day, I sorted out the parking issues, but clouds and snow stopped me from testing tonight.

Hope you get some clear nights soon to collect more data on this target.

[simmo39]

Hi Wim. Thanks for the comments, I use PixInsight but still only just scrapping the surface of it. Still a lot to learn! Im sure you are right that there is still more that can be pulled from the image. I will give it a go later.

 As for the gremlins! I think its the time of year and the weather, Rushing out and setting up without engaging brain! lol   If i see a gap in the clouds im off and setting up as fast as i can before it goes. Not always the best way to do things. Hopefully will add some more data to it over the next week or so.

All the best. simmo

[wimvb]

2 hours ago, simmo39 said:

Hi Wim. Thanks for the comments, I use PixInsight but still only just scrapping the surface of it.

If i see a gap in the clouds im off and setting up as fast as i can before it goes. Not always the best way to do things. Hopefully will add some more data to it over the next week or so.

All the best. simmo

PixInsight: that makes it easier. Try this: Make two duplicates of your unstretched image after dbe and colour calibration. On one of the copies, use masked stretch with a preview that contains only background as target. Decrease targeted background to 0.1 and increase clipping fraction to 0.01 or even slightly higher.

Compare this to a histogram transformation that you do on the other copy of your image.

"Over the next week or so"

Isn't that overly optimistic? 

Good luck

Edited February 26, 2017 by wimvb