M103 Open Cluster LRGB - 6 Nov 2017

[geoflewis]

Continuing my theme of shooting LRGB with a bright moon around I thought I add M103 to my list of Messier targets. Unlike NGC891 from last night this was pretty much opposite the moon and with the moon rising a bit later with reducing phase, plus is is a nice bright target the data was easier to collect and process. C14+Optec FF/FR and QSI583wsg 9x5 mins each LRGB for total of 3 hours. I could wait until tomorrow to process, so hereis a quick look at it....

Thanks for looking.

Geof

[Luna-tic]

Wow, that's nice. I'm working hard toward stacking and processing, but still have some work to do and hardware/software to obtain and learn how to use. I love how the background field fills with stars when you can do extended exposures or multiple images and stack/process. I can see how the moonlight affected the image, the sky is not quite dark, but I still think it's a great picture.

I tried out a new site about two weeks ago, it sort of qualifies as a dark site around here. It was a moonless night, and I went out late so I could observe in Orion and that portion of the sky. It turned out so nice, I thought to try some images, and M103 was one of my targets. I used a Nikon DSLR at prime on my Edge 8 and got a single image of M103, 47 seconds at ISO 1600. The color in the main stars came out pretty well, but the field behind is rather empty, and my exposure time exceeded my tracking ability, so the stars are starting to stretch. I'd like to share it for comparison, but yours is by far the better. 

[geoflewis]

Thanks Luna-tic,

I feel that I am only now getting to grips with processing LRGB data from my QSI camera, having until last year been solely using a DSLR. In particular I was finding it difficult to get the separate channels data to align well at the image scale of the C14 compared with when I'd used the much wider field of my 4" APO. When I get the processing right with data off the QSI, then the stars definitely have more pop than from the DSLR. This one came out well and yes the Moon was still flooding the sky, but the lighter background was also from choice as I think that is more natural looking than a black one, also with less risk of clipping any very faint features that may have been captured. Thanks also for sharing your version which is a lovely rendition from those very short sub exposures. Imaging from a dark site definitely makes a big difference, which is one of the main reasons we moved to my rural location about 18 months ago.

Best Regards, Geof