M81, 186 mins of Luminance

[tomato]

I was knocked out by @Xplode's recent image of M81/M82 using the new ASI6200, that is one powerful camera! I also despaired that my current approach of using 8300 sensors for 'widefield' on the Esprit 150 and the little ASI178 CMOS cameras for smaller targets was not going to cut it and a very expensive camera change would be required some time in the future.

Anyway, I have given the 178s a shot on M81 and tried binning 2x2 as the galaxy was filling the FOV on this imaging scale. I thought I had collected enough data (around 6 hours) for a colour result only to find that SGP didn't save any subs during the  second session, even though no error messages were displayed, grrrrr.

Here is 186 mins Lum (93 x 120 s), calibrated and processed in APP. Hopefully I can collect the missing RGB data after storm Jorge blows through.

Thanks for looking.

[Stargazer33]

Wow; what 'scope are you using? I don't think I've seen M81 filling a frame like that before. Real shame about your RGB data. I hate it when you think you've got good data only to find out that's not the case. 

[Laurin Dave]

Very nice..  are you sure that they’re not saved somewhere..  I didn’t think SGPro would run without an output directory..  it’s happened to me where they get saved to a directory from a previous run due to my error and then spent ages searching for them 

Dave

 

 

[tomato]

3 minutes ago, Stargazer33 said:

Wow; what 'scope are you using? I don't think I've seen M81 filling a frame like that before. Real shame about your RGB data. I hate it when you think you've got good data only to find out that's not the case. 

It’s an Esprit 150. I think the large aperture and binning has enabled a fair amount of detail to be collected in a relatively short integration time.

To say I am frustrated by the loss of colour data is an understatement, I was playing around with SGP after a previous session trying to use it to capture calibration frames, and I changed the directory path in the sequence. However, I checked the log and the directory exists but there are no files in there. 

[tomato]

4 minutes ago, Laurin Dave said:

Very nice..  are you sure that they’re not saved somewhere..  I didn’t think SGPro would run without an output directory..  it’s happened to me where they get saved to a directory from a previous run due to my error and then spent ages searching for them 

Dave

 

 

Thanks Dave. I am inclined to agree with you that they must be somewhere, because the file path did get changed in the sequence, but I’ve done a search of the entire drive, with keywords red, blue, green and M81, it found lots of files but not the ones I’m looking for.

[Xplode]

8 hours ago, tomato said:

Thanks Dave. I am inclined to agree with you that they must be somewhere, because the file path did get changed in the sequence, but I’ve done a search of the entire drive, with keywords red, blue, green and M81, it found lots of files but not the ones I’m looking for.

You should check the SGP log file and see if there's any info on the location or if there's an error.
Also for later you might want to look into a software called Everything, it's the best search software around.

It's rare to see such detailed M81 images, i think you have done very well!
If you want to check how it will look with RGB i could send you RGB later today?

Edited February 29, 2020 by Xplode

[alan potts]

Never seen it so large without a big image crop. I will have to explore the 2x2 binning ability of my 183mc on my 805mm APO and maybe on my 190mm M/N . Hope you manage to find the colour parts somewhere. This is not in the best place for me at the moment as it is over my fairly large house from the obsey, so heat rising will not help or the smoke from the wood burner heating system.

Alan

[tomato]

Thanks everybody for your feedback.
 

After further musings I’m 95% certain SGP saved the images. I did a lot of playing around with calibration images the morning after as I discovered that the dimensions of the files saved by SGP and SharpCap ( which is the software I have been using to do the calibration files) are different by 4 pixels and it didn’t look like APP was calibrating properly with them.

Anyway, in my confusion I think I moved the lights from the imaging laptop and I think they may be lurking on my plug in HDD or on the processing PC. I will have a good hunt for them this morning.

[tomato]

No joy I'm afraid, I have searched all drives and recycle bins to no avail, the SGP log has a file path for where it saved them but when I look on the drive the final folder name is missing.

However, there could be a 3-4 hour clear spell tonight with really transparent skies after the storm has gone through. It will be very breezy but that doesn't bother me in the dome.👍

I already have the red channel in the can, just need green and blue....

Red stack

 

[tomato]

5 hours ago, alan potts said:

Never seen it so large without a big image crop. I will have to explore the 2x2 binning ability of my 183mc on my 805mm APO and maybe on my 190mm M/N . Hope you manage to find the colour parts somewhere. This is not in the best place for me at the moment as it is over my fairly large house from the obsey, so heat rising will not help or the smoke from the wood burner heating system.

Alan

I think the 190 mm M/N gives a very similar FOV to the Esprit 150, at least with a 8300 sensor. I have been very impressed with the binned capture, more detail captured for the same amount of integration, no significant loss of detail, and more forgiving guiding. What's not to like?