M45 - 21st Oct

[Ant]

Hello all,

Had quite a nice night out on Tuesday. Set up around 8pm and allowed the scopes too cool down.

I really wanted to get a half tidy M45, and use a nice bright object to practise on. Had a bit of a nightmare early on. The drivers I installed for the camera were the 350D drivers not the 300D drivers. The laptop would not see the DMK (or rather it did for a little while then didn't). Three restarts, some swearing, a "Windows has recovered from a serious error" later and everything seems to be working.

Anyway, starting with 34 x 1 minute, then 17 x 2 minutes, 15 x 3 minutes and 4 x 4 minutes.

There were more 4 minute subs, but the last three were lost due to tracking errors. The second from last image actually looked quite good as PHD found a guide star about a third of the way through the exposure and does look quite cool.

The images were taken with the 300D and ED80, guided with the DMK21 and Skymax127 (with FR).

Software used DSLRshutter for canon control, PHD for mount guiding, DSS for stacking and PSCS2 for some final tweaks.

To be honest it isn't as good as I had hoped. I think that I need a better LPR filter, maybe time to invest in a CLS! But it's marginally better than previous attempts.

I decided to pack up around 1:30 am and noticed that the moon had risen, so I have some AVI's to look at yet!

(click to enlarge)

[Tim]

Well at least you got a result Ant, despite the problems, which is always nice!

I think you would find the EOS clip CLS filter invaluable to be honest, it just sits nicely in the camera and does its thing. Although I get better results when used in combo with the modded 350d, it also works well on my unmodded 400d.

Subs of 180secs @ iso800 are easily possible, even when shooting over a city's worth of LP.

I am starting to think that having all the subs the same length may yield a better result from DSS. I havent got a definite "yes" on that really, but I have started to standardise the time and iso I am using, and the results seem to be a bit better. Also easier when assigning darks!

I reckon there's more to be had form this data though Ant, did you shoot in RAW mode?

Cheers

TJ

[Psychobilly]

Hi Ant theres a load more in there waiting to come out. Try and hit the gradient early on in the processing and you'll get a whole lot more..

I used GradientXTerminator to remove the gradient from the jpeg and was able to get more out of the nebulosity...

Billy...

[thing]

[quote author=TJ link=topic=33462.msg341517#msg341517 date=1224806736

I am starting to think that having all the subs the same length may yield a better result from DSS. I havent got a definite "yes" on that really, but I have started to standardise the time and iso I am using, and the results seem to be a bit better. Also easier when assigning darks!

Cheers

TJ

I agree with that, it definitely seems to like equal length subs better. Nice job Ant given your difficulties.

[Ant]

Cheers guys.

Yep all RAWs, I really need to sort out my processing skills. They are not good.

I have a book about that, so will have to read up.

Maybe I should try and stack each "batch" separately and see what happens..

Ant

[Tim]

Stack each batch, then stack the results!