OSC and NB comparison from a severe light polluted site.

[Bigfoot 9907]

I live in a Bortle 9 area and even on a dark moon free clear night i can count no more than a dozen stars in the sky.  I suffered terribly with OSC imaging, even with a LP filter and processing was a nightmare as my images were incredibly noisy.

However, recently i decided to go the NB route and a few weeks ago i took a 1.5 hour exposure of the veil nebula in HA and 1.5 hours in Oiii using a skywatcher 200p reflector telescope and ASI1600mm camera.  The resultant HOO image is below. ( The image with the diffraction spikes) Compare that with a 5 hour OSC image i took a couple of years ago from the same light polluted back garden, i used a Meade 80mm refractor telescope with an Atik 320e camera and Light Pollution filter. I would have needed to go to a dark sky site for a comparable image.

Galaxy imaging will still be a problem with the RGB filters, but at least the nebula images will be a lot better

 

[vineyard]

Thats really helpful thank you.  I also took some shots of the W Veil w a filtered OSC (admittedly uncooled on a v hot night) recently (here).  The difference between your mono & OSC images is palpable.  Have been leaning more & more towards mono for my cooled camera upgrade & this just adds more heft to that lean.

Cheers,

Vin

[knobby]

Agreed, I couldn't get a decent image from my bottle 6 (nearly 7) garden, bit the bullet and got the 1600 mm and Ha, Oiii and Sii filters. I won't be going back to OSC.

[DaveS]

Yes. When I was living in London suburbs, Bortle 8 I did quite a few NB images that still stack up well, but my attempts at galaxy imaging in RGB were a disaster. The only worthwhile RGB I did was of M13, which is nice and bright, cutting through the LP well.

[ApophisAstros]

23 hours ago, Bigfoot 9907 said:

I live in a Bortle 9 area and even on a dark moon free clear night i can count no more than a dozen stars in the sky.  I suffered terribly with OSC imaging, even with a LP filter and processing was a nightmare as my images were incredibly noisy.

However, recently i decided to go the NB route and a few weeks ago i took a 1.5 hour exposure of the veil nebula in HA and 1.5 hours in Oiii using a skywatcher 200p reflector telescope and ASI1600mm camera.  The resultant HOO image is below. ( The image with the diffraction spikes) Compare that with a 5 hour OSC image i took a couple of years ago from the same light polluted back garden, i used a Meade 80mm refractor telescope with an Atik 320e camera and Light Pollution filter. I would have needed to go to a dark sky site for a comparable image.

Galaxy imaging will still be a problem with the RGB filters, but at least the nebula images will be a lot better

 

What would happen if you put a EFW with narrowband filters on a OSC, would you get the best of both worlds or just no benefit?

Roger

[Bigfoot 9907]

7 hours ago, ApophisAstros said:

What would happen if you put a EFW with narrowband filters on a OSC, would you get the best of both worlds or just no benefit?

Roger

I've never tried that with my OSC bit i assume the image will not be a higher resolution as a mono camera due to the Bayer matrix.

[don4l]

8 hours ago, ApophisAstros said:

What would happen if you put a EFW with narrowband filters on a OSC, would you get the best of both worlds or just no benefit?

Roger

Only a quarter of the pixels would pick up any Ha, and that would be through the red filter on each pixel.

I bought my first mono camera after spending 10 nights trying to image M16.  The first 20 minutes with the mono/Ha filter combo picked up a much, much better signal than my old EOS300 had in 10 nights.

I didn't try the Ha on the EOS,  but I'm fairly sure that it would have been mediocre at best.