M33 second attempt

[Nicola Hannah Butterfield]

I did M33 back in Jan from the records, however since then as you may have seen, I have had a few problems, and having lost my BYE keys, I thought I would try APT, and with a bit of help from those on here, I seem to have things working.

30x2min subs, with 30, bias, darks and flat, dew become a problem to guiding and to the mine mirror a little, so a little work to do yet with settings, but it seems to guide pretty well to two mins, though the meridian flips either through the focus out, I need to get a new M48/EOS mount this one has a little movement in it, as stars in the couple of frames I did get had some distortion, not sure yet if it was focus or guiding.

Anyway, for what it's worth.

 

This was Jan's effort.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Nicola Hannah Butterfield

[mareman48]

WOW 🤗

Thats pretty sweet, far better than any of my attempts.

[Nicola Hannah Butterfield]

17 hours ago, mareman48 said:

WOW 🤗

Thats pretty sweet, far better than any of my attempts.

Thanks, I am using my Canon 40D instead if the 6D, whilst the 7 has a wider field of view, until I get a coma corrector it suffers terrible coma, the 40 does but much less so.

The rest is practise, I have struggled a little changing from BYE to APT, but in the long run it will be easier if I change to a dedicated astro camera.

Being able to take consistent flats with the LED light panel I think is paying dividends as well, shooting consistently at iso 400 enables me to reuse bias and darks, providing the same temp range, it is a thing you don't have a great deal of control on a dslr, things you can do to cool it, but it is likely to always fluctuate a little. So I can now spend more time on the lights, knowing bar a sudden down poor, I will always get flats to correspond to the lights. I can't off the top of my head remember the previous light's duration, but I know the flats would have been awkward.

I have also been working on processing, I am attempt to image as many Messier objects as I can, not spending too much time, but if I can get an hr subs on most, should be able to get some form of an image on most, planetary ones are going to be troublesome, with what kit I currently have M57 so far has been disappointing due to its size.

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by Nicola Hannah Butterfield
spelling

[Ags]

A very good image! A lot of progress since the previous effort too.

[Paul M]

Very well done! I really like the processing. Nice and sparkly! I'm not a fan of star reduction/denial; natural diffraction spikes add something to the stars.

I think M33 is my favorite galaxy, from way back in the days before amatuer imagers could get close to it. My own atempts on M33 so far have been, er, sub optimal! 

[Nicola Hannah Butterfield]

@Ags thanks.

@Paul M I like seeing stars in images, it puts a context to the enormity of the cosmos. I like to see how far a photon of light has travelled as well, furthest so far about 3.2 billion LY. Though, I seem to have lost the website that had a database of all the distent ones.