NGC 891 , 898 ABELL 347

[mikemabel]

Took this last night , sky was a bit hazy i think

Any comments appreciated .... Processing not my forte unfortunately  i dont have the patience

No flats were used and as usual the filter wheel shadow is there

ASI 183MM Pro 60x60s Lum, 30x60s RGB, SW ST102 Guided

NGC 898 is in the centre by the way

Cheers

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 2, 2019 by mikemabel
New Image

[MartinB]

A very nicely composed image Mike andNGC 898 is looking good.  Does need a decent flat though

[MarsG76]

I agree with MartinB, needs a flat which would improve the image greatly.

 

 

[Star101]

Ditto on flats. They will clear up the vignetting and making it look smooth right across the image.

I have the same camera. Its a great camera. I recommend Darks/Flats and Bias ( I use 1 second Darks as Bias )

Why not give it a go with this image and post it here ?

[mikemabel]

Thanks for the advice 

I took flats this morning and restacked. I took flats using a white box and APT ccd flat aids

I use DSS to stack my images 

I am thinking about buying a ZWO 533MC pro to replace the 183 or compliment it 

Here we go

Cheers

 

 

[MartinB]

Much better!

[mikemabel]

Thank you for your advice and  comments

Clear Skies !

 

[vlaiv]

Nice image.

6 hours ago, mikemabel said:

I am thinking about buying a ZWO 533MC pro to replace the 183 or compliment it 

I would not rush into that. Although 533MC is nice sensor I don't think it can replace 183 since latter is mono.

From what I can see, you used ST102 as imaging scope, right? Maybe first fiddle around with it and gear that you already have. Software binning will produce better SNR as you are slightly oversampling because you are using short focal length achromat (colors are not in focus and that produces blur). Using yellow filter will help much with star bloat as it will remove most of violet part of spectrum.

[mikemabel]

The ST102 focuser itself had a mechanical wobble when i took it off the mount so i have retired it and gone back to the Skywatcher 

ED 72 that should improve things hopefully. I used the 102 due to its aperture over the ED72 . 

I have been back and forth over binning with the 183 and used 2x2 for a while but i decided to go for 53 gain instead of 111

and to use 1x1 binning and 60sec exposure to see if that improved detail and dynamic range as i felt that at 2mins ,111 gain and 

2x2 binning i was oversaturating the chip and losing detail. i recently imaged the iris nebula with these setting as was dissapointed with the results hence the change in settings.

Thanks for your input .

The weather is about to change for the worse again !

 

[vlaiv]

Don't use on chip binning - use software binning instead - no saturation issues and gives you more control without loosing anything (except for larger sub size off the camera). In fact you can decide whether to bin in pre processing stage, so you can try to process image above with x2 and x3 bin in software and see if you like the results better.

[mikemabel]

Cheers Vlaiv

I set the binning in APT in the image plan settings but im not sure how i would do this otherwise.

I use DSS and Gimp though i am trying Photoshop now

 

 

 

[vlaiv]

20 minutes ago, mikemabel said:

Cheers Vlaiv

I set the binning in APT in the image plan settings but im not sure how i would do this otherwise.

I use DSS and Gimp though i am trying Photoshop now

 

 

 

Ah, I see, lack of software support. Maybe easiest way to do it (although not the best - I think it's better to bin individual subs after calibration and prior to stacking) would be to download ImageJ software (free/open source written in java so it's available for multiple platforms) and once you finish stacking image in DSS - save it as 32bit fits format (Gimp works with fits format).

Then open it in ImageJ and use Image / Transform / Bin menu options. Then select average method and x2 or x3 (depending how much you want to bin) - after that save as fits and proceed to process it in Gimp (or Photoshop).

 

[mikemabel]

will give it a try

Cheers