NGC281 Pacman first attempt

[Padraic M]

I finally managed to get some clear skies over the weekend to test out my new Esprit 80 w/ FF and a tuned and balanced mount. Was very pleased with my focus and guiding, and Saturday night in particular was stable and very transparent all night. Unfortunately I'm back in Bortle 2 after a summer in Bortle 8 and the difference is immense.

I managed to get 4 hours (48*300) of Lum data using a Thousand Oaks LP2 Narrow Band UHC filter. Stacked in DSS and post-processed with Gimp. I also shot 1 each of RGBx300. The composite LRGB result is #2 below - not as sharp, because the stars start to get very blotchy. Maybe 5 mins of colour data just isn't enough? Why are the stars so much bigger in the Red channel than in the others?  

These are fairly basic efforts. I'd be very grateful for advice on how to get these to stand out more - I would imagine that  more must be possible with 4 hours of data.

 

 

[Padraic M]

Skywatcher Esprit 80 with field flattener
ZWO ASI1600MM Pro, gain 139, -20C; ZWO Mini 5-position efw
AA Starwave 50mm guide scope with ZWO ASI290MM Mini guidecam
48x300 luminance
1x300 each R,G,B
50x dark frames
50x flat frames
50x dark flat frames
No bias frames

APT, PHD2, DSS, Gimp
Sharpcap polar alignment 16 arcsec
Guiding total RMS 1 arcmin

[mackiedlm]

These are nice. It was a nice change to have some clear sky in Ireland last week! I had my kit out too.

 

I only do OSC at the moment so cant help you  in terms of colour duration. But having done this target a couple of weeks back (during our last good night!) I can tell you I found it a harder target to do well than I had expected.

 

Good luck and hopefully this will be a run of clear skies.

 

David.

[Padraic M]

@mackiedlmThanks David, I'm really missing those west-coast dark skies!