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jewel box The Jewel Box open star cluster ( ngc 4755 ) in Curx
By
MikeODay, in Imaging Challenge #12 - Open Clusters (Now Closed)
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By Xiga
Like the lunatic that I am, I decided to get the scope out last week during that storm that was passing through. The skies were clear and there was no moon about, so I figured why not! Only problem was the 17-20 mph winds, lol.
I got 2 hrs of subs but had to throw away half of them due to guiding problems more so than the wind, amazingly. This was the 2nd time in a row i'd had Dec guiding problems, and that's after about 2 years of not having a single problem guiding. After the 1st hr of wasted subs, I turned off Fast Switching in Dec and chose to only Dither in RA, and the Dec problems mostly went away, at least to allow me to capture 1 hr of 'still dodgy but just about useable' subs. Once M42 disappeared behind the neighbour's roof, I then re-calibrated on the Celestial Equator (Dec 0) and when I switched to the Pinwheel Galaxy I was able to guide as normal again (with Fast Switching and Dithering in both RA and Dec both turned on again) and didn't lose any subs, despite the wind, so I've decided that from now on I won't be calibrating at the target itself, i'm always going to do it at Dec 0.
I decided to throw this in with another 1 hr of subs (plus 10 x 30s for the core) that I took back in Jan 2017 (has it really been that long?!). That hr also had issues, with some weird streaking in the lower left that I could never work out what caused it. The D5300 hadn't been modified at that stage either. So I fired it all in to APP and decided to stack it anyway, and give it a quick process. Then chose to crank it up to 11 on the colour front, just for laughs.
It won't be going on the wall anytime soon, lol, but I suppose it came out a bit better than I was expecting, all things considered.
20 x 360s with an IDAS-D1
D5300, 80ED, HEQ5-Pro.
Stacked in APP, processed in PS.
CS!
edit - I forgot to downscale it - so no pixel peeping allowed 😋
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By Xiga
Between the clouds, moon, neighbour's roof, nearby floodlights, and all the usual general life stuff, i've simply not been able to get any meaningful data on the HH (or Orion for that matter either) for the last 2 years! To say it's been my nemesis would be an understatement. At this rate i'll be glad to have that box ticked proper before i hit 50 😅
So when we had a few hrs of clear sky (and no moon) a couple of weeks back i knew i had to give it a go. I luckily managed 9 x 7mins before it disappeared behind the neighbour's roof. I also have 5 subs of Ha (90 mins in total) from last March, although it wasn't of great quality (there was a nearly full moon right beside it, plus the neighbour's fire smoke was billowing up through the Fov 🤨 ).
I've been waiting patiently for more clear skies to add to this, but that 's not working out too well, lol. I really shouldn't be processing this, but all work and no imaging makes Ciaran a dull boy, so here goes nothin...
9 x 7mins with an IDAS-D1
4 x 1200s and 1 x 900s of Ha
~2.7 hrs in Total
Stacked in APP and processed in PS. Lots of heavy lifting needed in PS, and i've reduced it to 50% in size as well.
For now, at least, this will have to do. There's a lot of good HH's about so hopefully this one's not too hideous! 😂
I'll post what the 2 raw stacks looked like below as well, just for kicks.
Here's the 9 x 7 mins raw stack (with DDP stretch):
And here's the ~90min Ha raw stack:
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By tasheeya
Leo Triplet (M65, M66, and NGC 3628), The Leo Triplet is a small group of galaxies about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo.
large version at astrobin
https://www.astrobin.com/391520/
Date: 4th January and 2nd February 2019
Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro
Telescope: Orion 10" f/3.9 Newtonian Astrograph
Camera: Nikon D5300 self modded full spectrum
Total exposure: ~3 hours
Subs : 300sx36, Flats, Bias, Darks
ISO: 400
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm
Guide Cam: ASI120MM
Filter: Optolong UV/IR cut
Corrector: Baader MPCC Mark III Coma Corrector
Capturing: digiCamControl
Guiding: PHD2
Stacking: Deep Sky Stacker
Processing: Pixinsight/Photoshop
Location: Ridiyagama, Sri Lanka
thank you and clear skies.
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By Xiga
I wasn't going to share this, but what the heck. The winter of discontent continues, so i guess even this little data has to constitute an image these days.
After what seemed like an age of night after night of clouds, we had a rare few hrs of clear skies one night last week. So i managed to grab a whopping 9 x 7 mins of the Horsehead Nebula before it disappeared behind the neighbor's house. I then needed something else to aim for, so i brought up the Leo Triplet Sequence in SGP and managed to nab about 2.75 hrs in total, before the clouds returned. It really, really needs double, if not triple this amount, so i wasn't really intending on processing this tbh. I was really just messing about in APP and PS testing several things out, so there was no proper workflow being adhered to. I took an Auto DDP stretch out of APP and quickly processed it in PS, without much care. I noticed it was lacking in colour, so i thought this would actually be a good candidate to try out some ArcSinh Colour-Preserving stretches, so i took another linear stack and used Mark Shelley's excellent PS method for doing the colour-preserving stretches. Lo and behold, i ended up with a stack that was very rich in colour, so much so in fact that the sky background had also mottled up pretty bad. So i used a mask to only apply the rich colours to the stars and galaxies of the original image, and it made a HUGE difference. It was only at this stage that i suddenly thought i might as well actually go ahead and make an image out of it.
I really want to stretch it more, but it just can't take it. There's just not enough data, end of story. In fact i may have already stretched it too far as it is. The background is a tad lower than i would have liked as well, but it was needed to help suppress the noise. I've ran quite a bit of NR too, more than i'm usually comfortable with, and it's still noisy. I know what the answer to that is of course, more data! 😆 (not likely). I do quite like the colours though 😃
Feedback welcome.
24 x 420s (2.75 hrs)
80ED (x0.85), D5300, HEQ5-Pro, IDAS-D1.
Resized to 66% to help hide some of the warts!
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