M45 and muck 28th Oct

[MartinB]

Whilst waiting for HH to rise above our hedge I got 3 hours of data on M45

ED80 with 0.8 reducer/ff. QHY8 36x5mins with IDAS filter.

My QHY chip is getting muckier and muckier and this was the worst image up until the horsehead which followed. When I look at the chip it appears pristine. It iced up recently and I wonder if this has left some deposits or even damaged the chip. Will send a sub to Bern for analysis. Anyway, it made processing a nightmare. I had to clone out all the rubbish in the stars and nebulosity. For the background I just upped the black level to match that of the normal background brightness using curves and that sort of did the job.

The QHY 8 takes forever compared to my old H9 Couldn't use my QSI because it would have bloomed to oblivion

(click to enlarge)

[russ]

Beautiful Martin. Nebulosity is awesome but what really grabs is the black background and fantastic star colours. Has to be a candidate for POTW

Oh and it's now my desktop image of the week. An image to finally topple Ben's superb double cluster from my desktop.

[LostNSpace]

It always gets me Martin on how good imaging equipment is at picking up splodges and dust that we cant see with our naked eye, its a pain too when it doesnt matter how much you carefully clean the equipment the splodges and dust seem to remain......

You have done a fine job with processing though, your M45 looks fine on my screen......nice image

Mark

[RobH]

A very fine image regardless of the problems Martin.

Are you happy with the QHY generally?

I ended up selling my 16HRC because of the lack of sensitivity compared to the 16HR but am considering a QHY8 for widefield.

Cheers

Rob

[Psychobilly]

A cracking image Martin the Neb certainly leaps out of the background...which is nice and deep as well...

Billy...

[steppenwolf]

Its a striking image despite the problems, Martin.

[bazza]

Well, the processing may have been a nightmare - but it's certainly paid off!

Beautiful image Martin - superb colour. How much nebulosity?!

Barry.

[MartinB]

Thanks everyone, it was certainly hard work getting rid of the dust. I will try to post an uncleaned image.

Rob, the QHY8 is a great camera. The sensitivity is ok and the QE data is good, just wish Sony made this chip without the bayer matrix!

[Ant]

A very nice image Martin, one of my favorite clusters.

The fine detail in the nebula is superb!

Sorry to hear of the problems that you've had. Hopefully there easily fixable.

Ant