M16 - Eagle Nebula

[Buzzard75]

I have wanted to shoot M16 for quite a while now and I finally had the chance to this past Friday night. I and several other club members went out to our dark sky site. Most were doing visual observing, but a few of us were doing photography work. I think I was the only one doing DSOs, everyone else was doing planetary on Jupiter or Saturn. I had wanted to get at least an hour or two on target, but the wind had other plans. I ended up with about 20 minutes worth of actual useable subs and even some of those were questionable. Terrible. It's what I had though, so I went ahead and processed them. If I hadn't had calibration frames there wouldn't have been much point. It was so hot that night I had hot pixels all over my frames. I'd never seen a camera so bad, I was actually worried there was something wrong with it. Thanks to a few members on here, they assured me it was normal.

I spent a couple hours working in Photoshop on one of these photos. Then I spent literally all day learning how to use PixInsight for the first time and processed the second photo. It's amazing how much more powerful of a piece of software PI is than Photoshop for astrophotography. If you don't believe so, I'll let the results speak for themselves. I'm quite pleased with the result considering the data I had to work with. I can't wait to actually get some quality data.

Equipment used:
William Optics RedCat 51
iOptron SkyGuider Pro
ZWO ASI178MC (uncooled)
Baader Moon and Skyglow Filter

10x120s subs with calibration frames

 

[geordie85]

I tried this target tonight and with my mount on the far north side of my garden, I only just managed to get it into the FOV. 

Well done on a very low target and without astro darkness or cooling. 

[alan potts]

Nice shot as it is low from where you are, I am going to try this myself soon, last night I was on something really low, not looked at results yet. Didn't look too bad but it was a very good night.

Alan