Season Opener - NGC6888

[AMcD]

I took this image of the Crescent Nebula last night during testing and adjusting of the new motors and worm blocks I have installed on my Losmandy G11 along with a much needed cleaning and re-greasing of the mount bearings.   The image comprises 5 hours of 300 second integrations taken with a QHY8 OSC and an Optolong L-Extreme filter through a TS152 achromat on a Losmandy G11 guided with PHD2.  The image was acquired using SGPro, stacked in DSS and processed in PS.  The image remains somewhat noisy and I hope to add more data to it shortly.  As always, any comments and constructive criticism greatly received.

[ncjunk]

Very nice Crescent nebula, I had a QHY8 colour once but never did really take to it so it's nice to see a great pic from one.

[AMcD]

On 03/09/2022 at 06:13, ncjunk said:

Very nice Crescent nebula, I had a QHY8 colour once but never did really take to it so it's nice to see a great pic from one.

Many thanks for the compliment.  This is a bit of a swan song for this camera as I plan to move to a QHY268M this season and try my hand at mono.  I plan to redeploy the QHY8 to try some OSC wide field imaging using a camera lens 😀

[ncjunk]

I have always preferred mono and getting ha and rgb. Can be a pain to get a few nights in a row to get enough pics...but I'm lazy so automated everything.

Love the ha on the bubble or horses head nebula. 

Are qhy drivers any better now? they used to be a little bit flaky 

edit: the QHY268M is impressive, i like the look of that. I have an old atik 428ex which fits nicely to the filters etc but does have a smallish field of view.

Edited September 5, 2022 by ncjunk

[alacant]

On 01/09/2022 at 10:36, AMcD said:

comments and constructive criticism greatly received

 

Hi

Nice shot.

Our guess is that some de-noise was applied. Your idea of adding more frames is a good one.

Cheers

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by alacant

[AMcD]

5 hours ago, ncjunk said:

I have always preferred mono and getting ha and rgb. Can be a pain to get a few nights in a row to get enough pics...but I'm lazy so automated everything.

Love the ha on the bubble or horses head nebula. 

Are qhy drivers any better now? they used to be a little bit flaky 

edit: the QHY268M is impressive, i like the look of that. I have an old atik 428ex which fits nicely to the filters etc but does have a smallish field of view.

I have had no problem with the QHY drivers using SGPro, although I did find them a bit unreliable when I was using Nebulosity.  The biggest problem with the QHY8 is icing.  It is fine in the summer, but because it is very difficult to control the level of the set point cooling it ices very quickly in the winter.  In the winter I use a dew strap around the nose of the camera to clear the icing.   I understand that the QHY268M does not have this problem and I am looking forward to not having to start the camera / dew strap 3 hours before I commence an imaging session to ensure I have got rid of the ice 😂

[AMcD]

4 hours ago, alacant said:

 

Hi

Nice shot.

Our guess is that some de-noise was applied. Your idea of adding more frames is a good one.

Cheers

 

Yes, I applied some noise reduction in Photoshop.  My two key rules for astrophotography are "don't sharpen, just focus properly in the first place" and "don't apply noise reduction, just get more integrations".  Sometimes I break my own rules 😂

[AMcD]

I have added a further four hours of integrations to this image.  I have also tried processing each channel separately in PS, having watched a video on Astro Backyard about the technique.    The image now comprises 9 hours of 300 second integrations taken with a QHY8 OSC and an Optolong L-Extreme filter through a TS152 achromat on a Losmandy G11 guided with PHD2.  The image was acquired using SGPro, stacked in DSS and processed in PS.  This version did not use the freestanding Starnet ++ GUI as, for some reason, it has decided to stop working on my 16bit TIF files and is now simply spitting out black images with artefacts 🙄