ASI294MM Pro First Light - Eastern Veil SHO/HOO and M13 LRGB

[sagramore]

Hi everyone. It's been a long time since I posted here! My Canon 550D started to refuse to connect to my laptop around the same time I had my first child and so my gear has been left gathering dust in the shed for a good couple of years. However, I recently got a bit of inheritance from a parent and decided it was high time I treated myself to some "proper" AP gear to get me back into it all. I already had a 130-PDS reflector (with 0.9x CC) sitting on an NEQ6 but I invested in the ZWO ASI294MM Pro, a set of ZWO 31mm unmounted LRGB/SII/Ha/OIII filters, electronic filter wheel, and electronic focus motor! The most astounding thing is that I've had two nights since they arrived that I was actually able to get it all out to start to learn what the heck I'm doing.

Night 1 I couldn't help but give some narrowband a try. The Eastern Veil was in a good spot and so I gave that a go. Below there is an SHO image and a (slightly sloppier in terms of processing) HOO version. Night 2, I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at LRGB and so M13 was my target. Both nights had intermittent cloud, and I spent a lot of time learning how to use everything, so my data acquisition times are very low for both, however this only adds to my joy given that the results are already far better than I ever would have achieved with my old setup.

I'm also totally new to processing anything other than DSLR colour images (which I also wasn't great at...) so if anyone's got any constructive criticisms or tips I'd be really grateful to hear them. I've tried to give full acquisition details and some processing steps for all three images. Thank you for looking!

 

Acquisition details:

• Skywatcher 130-PDS on NEQ6 (primary moved up the tube to help reduce focus tube protrusion)
• ZWO ASI294MM Pro with ZWO 31 mm unmounted 7nm bandpass filters (SII, Ha, OIII) in a ZWO EFW
  • Gain 120
  • Sensor -5 C
  • Exposure 300 s - 7 frames each filter for a total of 35 mins per filter & 105 mins total (default "2x2 bin" mode)
• Astrophotography Tools for plate solving and acquisition
• Guiding: Startravel 80 + ZWO ASI120MC-Pro using PHD2

Processing details:

• Stacked in Deepskystacker using 6 dark frames and 20 flats per filter
• Each filter image imported into Photoshop 2022
  • Converted to 16 bit
  • Levels and curves
  • Astronomy Tools v1.6 "Enhance DSO & Reduce Stars"
  • More levels and curves
• Combined into RGB in Photoshop
  • Continued with levels and curves
  • Astronomy Tools v1.6 "Deep Space Noise Reduction"
  • Selective colour tweaks to improve "SHO Hubble Palette" colours
• Exported to Lightroom
  • Tweaked clarity, colour noise, and exposure

 

 

Acquisition details:

• Skywatcher 130-PDS on NEQ6 (primary moved up the tube to help reduce focus tube protrusion)
• ZWO ASI294MM Pro with ZWO 31 mm unmounted LRGB filters in a ZWO EFW
  • Gain 120, offset 8
  • Sensor -10 C
  • Exposures: L 12x180 s  1x1 bin (36 mins), RGB 3x180s each 2x2 bin (9 mins each) - TOTAL: 63 mins
• Astrophotography Tools for plate solving and acquisition
• Guiding: Startravel 80 + ZWO ASI120MC-Pro using PHD2

Processing details:

• Stacked in Deepskystacker using 8 dark frames for L, 6 dark frames for RGB, and 20 flats per filter
• Each filter image imported into Photoshop 2022
  • Converted to 16 bit
  • Levels and curves
  • More levels and curves
• Combined into LRGB in Photoshop
  • Continued with levels and curves
  • Selective colour tweaks
  • Camera RAW noise removal
  • Rotated and cropped
• Exported to Lightroom
  • Tweaked clarity, saturation, and noise removal

 

[MartinB]

A beautiful set of images.