DSW vs Bortle 6/poor seeing

[Rodd]

I thought this a pretty good comparison.  I did not start out with this in mind; it just sort of happened.  I have been plagued with clouds and rain lately and have run pout of my own data to crop into stand alone images.  I have reprocessed what I have far too many times.  So figured I'd give the Deep Sky West free data downloads a try.  They are complete data sets with 15-25 hours of integration, so they should be decent.  The data sets I chose to process were collected from the facility in the Atacama Desert in Chile.....can't get much better than that.   Unfortunately, the only comparison with my data is afforded by the data for the Eastern Veil nebula.  Since the image scale, FOV and overall image is almost identical to mine--comparison was inevitable.   The DSW image was collected with the TOA 150 and a 16200 camera, while my data was colleted with the TOA 130 with the KAF 8300 sensor-a 2 panel mosaic.  Both image scales are about 1 +/- arcsec/pix.    I have included 2 of my images--the full 2 panel mosaic, and the single panel of the head portion of the nebula.  i did this because I reprocessed the head panel a while back and it came out better than teh mosaic--closer to the DSW data.  It is not teh whole nebula--but it will offer a comparison.

DSW: TOA 150, HOO with RGB Satrs.  About 25 hours total (over half was for RGB so just using the stars was a bit of a waste, but I just could not incorporate the RGB into the nebula to decent effect.  Besides, that would nullify the comparison.

 

My data TOA 130 with STT-8300 and 3nm Astrodon filters Ha and OIII only--2 panel Mosaic about 30 hours-15 hours per panel

 

My data--a reprocess of the head with the same data (I lost the tail panel data in crash).  This was reprocessed a year or two later and is a stronger image.  I think closer to the DSW data.

 

Not sure why the scale is different in the last one--probably due to it only being 1 panel so the screen size is larger.  My final thought is ......pretty darn close.  I am sure broadband would be a different story.  But for narrowband, we are all sitting in our little piece of the Atacama Desert!

 

 

[tomato]

I would agree, with narrowband the gap between pristine skies and what most of us enjoy is er, narrowed.

Only trouble is my favourite class of DSO by a country mile is galaxies so it’s not much of a consolation.

[Rodd]

9 minutes ago, tomato said:

I would agree, with narrowband the gap between pristine skies and what most of us enjoy is er, narrowed.

Only trouble is my favourite class of DSO by a country mile is galaxies so it’s not much of a consolation.

I will be posting such a comparison if they ever put up a free data set.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

[tomato]

This isn’t a scientific comparison by any means but here is my processing of an historic free DSW dataset of M31 and two of my recent images taken with a RASA8  and CMOS OSC cameras. 
I don’t have the DSW capture details to hand but I’m pretty sure it was LRGB data and the integration times were longer than my examples. Putting my  clumsy processing aside (too much saturation on the DSW image), perhaps I shouldn’t be too down hearted?
 

DSW

RASA8 QHY268c

 

RASA8 Atik Horizon II OSC
 

[TareqPhoto]

Nice comparison, pity i live under worse Bortle, i think 8 or 9, now it looks like 6 or 7 because most LED lights aren't on, but they installed new LED lights around in my area, will see once they are done how that will be for our sky.

[Rodd]

On 05/01/2021 at 16:53, tomato said:

This isn’t a scientific comparison by any means but here is my processing of an historic free DSW dataset of M31 and two of my recent images taken with a RASA8  and CMOS OSC cameras. 
I don’t have the DSW capture details to hand but I’m pretty sure it was LRGB data and the integration times were longer than my examples. Putting my  clumsy processing aside (too much saturation on the DSW image), perhaps I shouldn’t be too down hearted?
 

DSW

RASA8 QHY268c

 

RASA8 Atik Horizon II OSC
 

Hey, just reduce the brightness of M31 a bit in your images and you will be right there, especially the Atik Horizon image