M27

[emyliano2000]

Hi guys.

I thought I would share my Saturday night result of M27, The Dumbbell Nebula.

40x300" lights with 30 flats and 30 bias. I was hoping to do 600" but APT was dropping the frames and that's why I chose to do 300 instead.

I'm pretty pleased with the new IDAS lp clip in filter as it's the first time I use it.

Some of the stars have some weird shapes but that might have been caused by the wind, I don't know.

Stacked in DSS and processed in PS and Lightroom on my computer and a litte bit in the Lightroom app on my phone.

Any coments would be really appreciate it.

Emil

[mikeDnight]

To my visual observers eye - I'm no imaging expert - that is one of the most pleasing views of M27 I've seen in a long time. I simply can't fault it, its superb! 

[emyliano2000]

2 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

To my visual observers eye - I'm no imaging expert - that is one of the most pleasing views of M27 I've seen in a long time. I simply can't fault it, its superb! 

Wow, thank you. I wasn't expecting that.

[alan4908]

Emil

A very good result - you have processed the main nebula and the starfield very well.  This is much better than my first attempts at this difficult object, I think you should be very pleased with your result.

You've obviously got a good eye for detail, since I hadn't noticed your point about some of the stars until you highlighted this fact. Looking at these, I think this small effect might be caused by a very small amount of camera tilt rather than wind.  

Alan 

[rl]

Excellent shot that seems to be getting the most out of your equipment.

[emyliano2000]

1 hour ago, alan4908 said:

camera tilt

About that, I bought an adapter for an all screw connection but in order to use it I would have to guide with my 9x50 finder-guider instead of the oag.  How bad could the flexure be? I got a couple of rings for the finder-guider too that I'm wanna fix on a vixen dovetail bar on top of the ota.

Would an all screw connection get rid of the camera tilt? I also aligned the focuser to the ota quite recently.

Emil

[ollypenrice]

Really nice M27. The main object, the background sky and the stars (apart from a minor shape issue) are super. The stars are small and colourful which is also important.

Olly

[emyliano2000]

Thank you guys for the lovely remarks. I've been very passionate about this hobby since day 1 and having such lovely words from you really makes me feel that I'm getting close to achieving my goals and even though it didn't come cheap (for me at least) I think it's worth every penny.

So thank you again.

Emil

[alan4908]

2 hours ago, emyliano2000 said:

About that, I bought an adapter for an all screw connection but in order to use it I would have to guide with my 9x50 finder-guider instead of the oag.  How bad could the flexure be? I got a couple of rings for the finder-guider too that I'm wanna fix on a vixen dovetail bar on top of the ota.

Would an all screw connection get rid of the camera tilt? I also aligned the focuser to the ota quite recently.

It's good to hear that you have an all screw connection this should help obtaining consistent imaging results- however, if the camera is tilted with respect to the OTA it will not help, all it will do it is make the tilt consistent.  If you want to explore this further then I'd suggest you download CCDInspector on a trial basis - I often use this as a tool to diagnose my subframes. To obtain the most accuracy, download a few subframes calibrate them and feed them into CCDInspector in an averaging mode - the output of CCDInspector will give you various items such as camera tilt, star aspect ratios, collimation etc.  You can then use these as an indicator of what to adjust (if anything). 

Alan