March 22, 2020: First Leo Triplet

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

After struggling with the mount's alignment and wasting much time, I finally got 2 hours of data on the Leo Triplet. It turned out this is framed rather nicely by the ASI183MC in the Meade 6"F/5 Schmidt Newton. I reduced exposure time to just 30 seconds because of the alignment issues, so this is a stack of 240 30s subs, with 30 darks, 60 flats, and 30 bias frames. I used gain 355 which FireCapture lists as the unity gain settiing ( not sure if this is correct, but it seems to work). Data captured in APT, stacked in Astro Pixel Processor, colour noise reduction in FitsWork, and initial curves, saturation boost and final curves in Gimp.

More data should be added, but I am pretty pleased with this

[JeremyS]

Nice result Michael 

[tooth_dr]

Definitely very impressive indeed. 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Couldn't resist giving it a tweak, as it seemed to be a bit dark on my monitor

[melsmore]

The second one looks better on my tablet too. Really good.

[don4l]

The second is much better on my screen too.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I notice much depends on the monitor. On my desktop machine the first is fine, on the laptop and mobile phone the second is definitely better

[EyeGuy]

Both are beautiful. I love the natural, subtle processing look.