M33 19 hrs Integration over 3 years

[tomato]

Like a lot  of folks in the UK, I struggle to get the total integration times the targets deserve, mainly due to the lack of clear, moonless nights, but also because I'm too impatient and want to move on to the next target. One solution is to combine data from historic sessions, particularly as the software packages can do a great job of combining data with different pedigrees.

So this is 19 hrs on M33 from 3 sessions dating back to 2018. I'm afraid I have not been very disciplined when it comes to framing objects from session to session so the image required a radical crop to achieve something like an  even background. I tried the software binning tool in Startools, at 35% of the original, which reduced the noise quite a bit, but it will get pixelly(?) very quickly if you zoom in.

 

[Phillyo]

Stunning!

[bottletopburly]

Lovely job 

[powerlord]

coincidentally shot this for the very first time last night !!

You've definitely got more detail than I got, which is to be expected vs my 100 minutes !

(I binned mine down to 25% as seeing limited)

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by powerlord

[Mike73]

Wow just look at all those Ha regions!

19 hours of well spent time, very nice image!

So what did you use OSC or mono?

 

[AL1]

Impressive

[tomato]

27 minutes ago, Mike73 said:

Wow just look at all those Ha regions!

19 hours of well spent time, very nice image!

So what did you use OSC or mono?

 

Thanks for comments. The majority was taken using G2-8300 CCD cameras through LRGB filters,  but for the most recent session I replaced one of the CCDs with a QHY268 CMOS OSC camera.

Looking back through my old folders I have found about 30 minutes of Ha data taken in 2018, I’ll have a go at adding this in.

[tomato]

I have added the 1500 secs of Ha I found, and after a mammoth session with the Affinity Photo's Inpainting tool, have rubbed out most of the horrendous frame join lines, enabling me to present a wider FOV. Please don't check the corner stars with any sky survey images or star atlases, they won't match! This is now definitely an "Art image". 

Combining historic data has taught me one thing, I must in future be more rigorous with my framing procedure at each session.

[alan potts]

Feel the image above has benefited from the addition, I have about 16 hours on this which I intend to add to this month, though I feel some of the frame are not best focus but i can hopefully reduce those in DSS with the selection percentage.

A wonderful image you have there.

Alan

[tomato]

Thanks Alan. The background still needs work, the colour looked reasonably even when viewing on my calibrated monitor, but on an iPad I can clearly see the diagonal red caste produced after adding in the Ha data.

This issue would not be there if I had framed the target consistently on each session. This is a bit of work as I change scopes and cameras regularly on my set up but  given  that combining multiple historic sessions is a way to get decent total integration times, the extra effort required on framing has to be worthwhile.