Markarian's Chain

[Dangerous-Dave]

Crikey, this is one deceptively tough target for a DSLR user, one with my skies at least. 4 hours of lights went into this, with 2 hours of darks but I still had to battle with background noise and gradients. Perhaps it's time to upgrade to a peltier cooled CCD (maybe when my observatory is built!)

WO Megrez 90, WO MkIII reducer, 20D with Astronomik clip filter, autoguided ST80/DMK/PHD, 35x420s at ISO800

[Beyond_Vision]

Very nicely captured Dave one for the album

Regards

Kevin

[MikeD]

Nice.

Flats would help to sort out the background.

Mike.

[markcol]

Lovely shot Dave.

Mark

[MidnightSun]

Looks like a bang-up job for all that work...nice shooting....

[Dangerous-Dave]

Thanks for the comments. Mike - I took ten flats too, but still had to run it through Pixinsight and Gradient Xterminator!

[steppenwolf]

Commented elsewhere but worth repeating - this is a great image and just shows what can be achieved with a DSLR camera. Flats although never easy would of course help but it would also be worth investing in 'Gradient Xterminator' if you use PhotoShop. Flats really are the key though. That said, on my monitor, this image does not scream 'GRADIENT!' at me.