M51 - 20-03-09 - Final QHY Test - C9.25

[jcm]

It was very murky last night. Decided to have a go at M51.

C9.25 at F6.3 , QHY8 ,

10 X 10mins. Wanted to try some longer exposures and try the gain at 40 rather than 30.

When I was packing up noticed one of the screws hold the camera was slack so the camera was not quite square on.

John

[ngc2403]

looks sharp, and has lots of detail. No colour? It's good though

if you adjusted the gain then you will need to take new bais flats, and darks for the camera.

[jcm]

Oh , the colour seems to have vanished in the processing.

Never mind , will try again tonight.

John

[ncjunk]

Nice pic, fair bit of detail there.

NC

[Psychobilly]

Oh , the colour seems to have vanished in the processing.

Never mind , will try again tonight.

John

Nice one John

DSS by any chance ... did you remeber to boost the saturation before saving if it was...

Billy...

[Tim]

Thanks for posting that John, I was thinking of trying that with my identical setup to yours, but instead wasted the whole night on the cats eye. Is that a cropped image?

I use the 32 bit tiffs from DSS, you'll find all the colour is there in those.

IMHO you'd be better finding your ideal gain setting during daylight, with a daylight shot. It really shouldn't be a trial and error affair, and once you find the ideal, stick with it.

Cheers

TJ

[jcm]

Yep , its slightly cropped. I removed the elongated stars near the edge - camera was not square on.

John

[RichieJarvis]

Very nice all the same, despite the non-square-ness!

I just hate it when that sort of thing happens.... Last night, I imaged M51 as well - got my LRGB, and switched over to Ha, and cropped to a star to focus, but forgot to untick the 'area' checkbox in MaximDL when I started the run - ended up shooting 9 perfectly focused single stars

D'oh!

[jcm]

I was hoping to try the QHY8 with my 130mm APO tonight. Too much cloud and murk.

John

[MidnightSun]

Nice one there...I just tried 51 last night for the first time, but nothing like that.....WTG...