Target Decision

[philhilo]

Evening all,

Looks like a clear moonless night tonight (fingers crossed). Using a SW200PDS with an ASI1600MM under bortle 8 skies I have around 12 good hours of usable 30 second subs across LRGB on M81 (prob another 8 hours of unusable 120 and 240second subs). With that combo I can fit both M81 and M82 in (I didn't initially as M81 was the secondary object for the night and the rotation for the nebula was wrong for M81/2).

Should I:

1. Shoot another 12 hours of centered M82 and make a mosaic (not done this before but willing to learn).
2. Shoot M81/2 in one frame and hope the gradients aren't going to kill the targets closer to the edges - it frames OK, could be slightly more space but OK.

I have ordered an IDAS LP D2 filter in the hope that it will deal with some of the brutal LP gradients I get in the lum and red. If it does arrive should I use it in either of the above scenarios, and will it make merging data impossible?

Phil

[alacant]

Hi

Sorry. Only just seen this so probably too late now. Anyway...

Wait for the luminance filter so you'll be able to get longer frames or if you're satisfied with the way the existing 12 hours turned out, move to something else?

Cheers

 

[rickwayne]

Don't want to sound like  a broken record but to me, "brutal gradients" == "buy Astro Pixel  Processor".  Just sayin'.