Imaging with Atik 16200 mono camera and Sky Watcher Equinox 100mm OTA from Lichfield, UK

[athornett]

I recently acquired a second hand Atik 16200 camera for a good price- then realised that it was too big for my telescope!.......I have now upgraded the scope to an Espirit 100 and the combination is dynamite! Wow! What a duo!

Here are my first two photos (couple of ipen clusters) take from Lichfield, UK, 800m from a large Tesco Extra supermarket and close to the centre of town, woth the light pollution that comes with that. My garden has a number of trees around it so quite dark at ground level but of course that doesn't help in the sky. My atik 16200 is mono and I am using Atik EFW with Svbony LRGB filters.

My guiding is still a work in orogress so the stars aren't as round  as  would like. However  up to these two photos I had only ever taken 60 second exposures with my 183M camera - these two were taken woth 300 second exposures so I am quite excited that I have managed  to increase the length that far. This has provided quite reasonable noise control. The 6 micron pixels appear to be quite forgiving too. It also seems a lot easier to get colour on the stars with this camera and scope than with my 183M and Equinox 80. Can anyone tell me why?

As with all my entries, please feel free to give any constructive feedback you would like to - everything is welcome!

Andy

 

[MartinB]

The first star cluster image is really nice, the stars are tight and the colour is great.  The second has burnt out stars and doesn't look as attractive..  To get good colour on stars you need to avoid saturation, cameras with a good full well depth can help here which is why you may have noticed a difference between cameras.

[athornett]

Thanks Martin for that feedback. Very helpful!

Andy

[athornett]

The first image was M35 and NGC2158 and the 2nd image was M38 and NGC1907 - I will have another at processing the latter.

[athornett]

2nd attempt at M38 and NGC1907 to see if I can get it better this time!

Andy