M45 & M101 - The good and the not so......

[Budgie1]

We had a nice clear night up here yesterday and, now I've got used too APT, EQDIR, CdC & PHD2 and getting them all working together, I had a few hours in the garden. 

I wanted to go for M101 so set up and got 20 x 5 minute lights, then ditched one as there was a nice satellite running rough through the centre. Unfortunately, although I had a dew heater on the scope it wasn't turned up high enough and I only noticed the light dew in the centre of the lens at exposure 17, so the focus is a bit out and I don't know how many were effected, but I stacked them and did the best I could. 

Camera: Canon EOS 2000D @ 1600 ISO

Scope: SW Evostar 100ED (no flattener this evening)

Mount: SW EQ5

Guiding: Celestron 9x50 finder with ZWO ASI 120MM Mini

After taking the darks and bias images, it was still good so I went for 5x 5 minute exposures at M45, just to see what I could get, and for 5 images stacked with the same dark, bias & flats, it hasn't come out too bad.

Lastly, on the 18th Sept, I had a go at the North American Nebula with my un-modded Canon EOS 2000D as an experiment, just to see how much nebulosity it would capture.

This is 10x 5 minute & 2x 10 minute exposures at 1600 ISO, stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop CS3.

 

The next purchase will be a dedicated astro camera!

Hopefully I can get some more it tonight.

Thanks for looking.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Budgie1

[MarkAR]

Decent results especially the Pleides.

[Budgie1]

I'm please with Pleiades, Mark, especially as it's only 5 lights in there. I didn't expect to see that much nebulosity with so little data.

If it stays clear tonight then I'll have another go at M101, only this time I'll put the field flattener on and remember to turn the dew heater to medium.

[Budgie1]

I had another go at M101 last night, this time with the field flattener attached and the dew heaters set correctly.

20x 5 minute images again at ISO 1600, stacked in DSS with 10 flats, 10 bias and 5 darks.

I'm still trying to work out the light area at the top of the image. I know it's caused by the flats because when I took the flats there was a dark area at the top of each but I don't know what's causing it. Anyone any ideas, is there a miss-alignment in the optics on the scope?

Anyway, much more detail in it but I think I'll have another go at processing when I have more time.

 

[MarkAR]

Looks good, the flats seem to be over compensating.

[Budgie1]

The last two nights have been clear and I managed to get some good data on M51.

This is 36 x lights, 9 x darks, 10 x bias & 10 x flats. The lights were a mix of 3 minutes @ 1600 IOS, 5 minutes @ 800 ISO and 4 minutes @ 800 ISO and I took a total of 45 lights but used 36 of them by the time I'd taken out the ones with satellites in and DSS used the best 90%. The total used came to about 2.5 hours exposure.

Mount: SW EQ5 Pro

Scope: SW Evostar 100ED with 0.85 field flattener.

Camera: Canon EOS 2000D un-modded

Guiding: Celestron 9x50 Finder with ZWO ASI 120MM Mini

Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop CS3, including cropping quite a lot due to the FOV with DSLR.

[Budgie1]

This week I have been getting to grips with Pixinsight.

I got a trial licence and I've been going through some of the DSS autosave files that I originally precessed with Photoshop CS3.

I want to say a big "Thanks" to @PaulR1 for his M33 tutorial, that helped me no end in the steep learning curve that is Pixinsight.

Anyway, here's my revamp of M31 from back in August and NGC7000 that I posted above, I'm really happy with the extra detail and colour PI has allowed me pull out: