M45 First Light..

[Mark Haythorne]

Hello All

I haven't posted in years, for some reason I had an urge to start Astrophotography again so I sorted out my scope which wasn't in the best state. 

After watching numerous videos on youtube and getting an evaluation version of SGPro I was excited to start again, this was back in December so due to conditions this never happened.

In the mean time I tried out Astro Pixel Pro as I could never get on with PI, too complicated for me :).

Then suddenly Last Saturday the clouds cleared and I was able to start my Astrophotography journey again.  After setting everything up my guiding started.. Well it it took a while to get everything going but eventually all was fine and I was happy to get LRGB subs and then some flats.

Imagine my excitement when I post processed my images and from this I got the following.

 

I was gutted, no idea what I did wrong.

So on Monday it was clear again, this time I took half as many lights..  But took Flats, Darks, Dark flats and Bias Frames and got the following.

 

L 40 X 30 sec

RGB 40 X 60 Sec

I know it's not the great but I'm so pleased with it

Cheers

Mark

[barkis]

Your first attempt appears to be the victim of some light intrusion. Could well have been just a car headlight, or a neighbour's security light. Pure guesswork so probably wrong.

However you did good with the following effort, it turned out well. Stars look good and  captured some nebulosity.  So well done, you are on your way again..

Best Wishes on your return to AP.

Ron.

 

 

 

[david_taurus83]

Great effort!

[whatablanker]

Nice second

[x6gas]

I've had a similar break and a similar story in terms of the urge to do some imaging again - welcome back!

Difficult to know what happened with the first image.  The bright blue satellite trail is definitely a clue, but I don't really know what it is telling us!  I'd be interested to know what that data looks like if you just stack the lights just in case there was an issue with the flats...

Perhaps it doesn't matter as the second version is a corker.  Lots of nebulosity coming out and good stars - what's not to like about that?  I have my M45 printed on canvas and hung on my living room wall but it's not as good as yours...

[Mark Haythorne]

Thanks for all your comments.

For the second image I dithered every 4th frame and anything with a streak I binned, also had to do a crop as the stars all around the edges where elongated. I guess I'll have use a flattener.

I don't think I'll try reprocessing just the lights as I'm doing it on a 2009 Mac Book and it took about 5 - 6 hrs

[x6gas]

6 minutes ago, Mark Haythorne said:

Thanks for all your comments.

For the second image I dithered every 4th frame and anything with a streak I binned, also had to do a crop as the stars all around the edges where elongated. I guess I'll have use a flattener.

I don't think I'll try reprocessing just the lights as I'm doing it on a 2009 Mac Book and it took about 5 - 6 hrs

Wowsers - what are using to stack?  And what kit did you use to capture this?

[Mark Haythorne]

12 minutes ago, x6gas said:

Wowsers - what are using to stack?  And what kit did you use to capture this?

I'm using AstroPixelProcessor and there was about 100 lights plus flats and the camera is a zwo 1600 therefore each image is 35mb so my machine struggles.. but gets there in the end.

[x6gas]

OK I'm getting it now!

Anyway, image number two is great so I don't think you have too much to worry about.

And apologies I use AstroArt to stack and it is ridiculously quick... will stack 100 lights, 100 flats and 100 darks in as long as it takes you to confirm the lights basically.