M74 LRGB

[tomato]

Despite the meagre total integration time of 95 mins, this is actually a collaboration, I provided 65 mins with an Esprit 150 and G2-8300 and Tomatobro did the rest with an Altair 102 mm APO and an Atik 383. The plan was for 4 hrs+ but my porch got in the way and the clouds rolled in at Tomatobro’s location.

APP combined the data no problem, which is encouraging as the plan is to make a dual rig from them next year once I retire. Very noisy result (again), roll on 2019.

Thanks for looking

[Demonperformer]

Very creditable effort for 95m on two different (sized) scopes.

[tooth_dr]

Nice hob indeed. APP works wonders with all data sources when combining.  ??

[Tomatobro]

I always check the images we take against the one published in my copy of the Cambridge Photographic Atlas and to match up it needs to be f;lipped and I was wondering if there was a convention as to  which is the correct way to present a DSO?

[tomato]

As there is no 'up' in space, I think the agreed convention is you can display them anyway you want, but then again how many upside down horseheads do you see? It is fortunate that we are both using refractors, if we were using reflecting scopes there would have been 8 diffraction spikes on all the bright stars....

[MartinB]

8 hours ago, Tomatobro said:

I always check the images we take against the one published in my copy of the Cambridge Photographic Atlas and to match up it needs to be f;lipped and I was wondering if there was a convention as to  which is the correct way to present a DSO?

Depends which galaxy you're looking at it from!  Looking great given the time constraints

[Tomatobro]

The spiral arms go one way in the Cambridge Atlas and in our image they go the other way so one is a mirror image of the other. This I guess a result of the light path through the scope. Its easy to flip the image in software to make them match up to check the star pattern etc. But what I wondered was is there a convention to follow?

The Atlas shows the spiral arms going clockwise and ours are going anticlockwise. In all other aspects they match.