august target selection help

[TiffsAndAstro]

so, its august. and in case i can see stars anytime soon, ill going to stick with one target for all of august or until i do 10 hours on it.

need some help on which one of the following carefully selected list i will have the 'best' image of after 10 hours with my gear and location.... 418mm f5.8 bortle6 imx533 and mediocre auto guiding. 

in slight order of preference (but i really have no clue):

ngc 7822 flaming skull

sh2-132 lion 

ngc 281 pac man

ngc 7380  wizard

sh2-157 lobster claw

to be honest i'd like to image them all. and this is not my full list   

they all seem to fill my fov pretty nicely, but im particularly unsure which would look least worst in broadband with just a uv/ir cut filter. some sort of dual narrow band filter will be bought probably in the next month or two. 

cheers for any guidance. 

[Elp]

Personally I wouldn't even attempt them without a narrowband filter, you won't get far off the noise floor. The difference with and without such filter is night and day. I'd only attempt such from a bortle 4 or less where it's complete dark, you really have to experience it to see the difference a dark sky makes.

Galaxies you'll get decent signal with your existing as they're not so spread out across pixels, even if they look small on sensor they'll look decent after a few hours.

[Elp]

If you do want to attempt a trial, go for the one with the highest magnitude (closer to zero or negative, the brighter it is).

[TiffsAndAstro]

4 minutes ago, Elp said:

If you do want to attempt a trial, go for the one with the highest magnitude (closer to zero or negative, the brighter it is).

Didn't really think to look at their magnitude in telescopius. Will do that ty

Lol n/a

Edited August 1 by TiffsAndAstro

[900SL]

Wizard and Pacman are good but only tried with dual narrowband on OSC. You need zero moon to get the Oiii. Lobster claw was pretty dim, as was the Lion when I tried.

Personally I would go for the Cygnus wall, it's pretty bright and you can pile the hours on in wideband

 

 

 

Edited August 1 by 900SL

[TiffsAndAstro]

6 minutes ago, 900SL said:

Wizard and Pacman are good but only tried with dual narrowband on OSC. You need zero moon to get the Oiii. Lobster claw was pretty dim, as was the Lion when I tried.

Personally I would go for the Cygnus wall, it's pretty bright and you can pile the hours on in wideband

 

 

 

I think that good advice, but I'm gonna try flaming skull for one night. See how it looks if anything.

After that I'll do the wall as you suggest as it's a safer target and can compare to my previous dslr version. Ty

Ps that's very nice framing btw

Edited August 1 by TiffsAndAstro

[TiffsAndAstro]

So after telescopious telling me n/a on mag, even desktop stellarium only give wizard as 7.2 which seems pretty good.

Just trying M17 for 30 mins between rooftops and jungle

I'll try skull then wizard

Edited August 1 by TiffsAndAstro

[Clarkey]

Surface brightness is a better guide for signal. Magnitude is the total brightness, but this can be small and bright or large and dim. I believe the skull is pretty dim, even in NB. But you never know.....

[TiffsAndAstro]

52 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

Surface brightness is a better guide for signal. Magnitude is the total brightness, but this can be small and bright or large and dim. I believe the skull is pretty dim, even in NB. But you never know.....

i just did 10 x 120sec  on skull live stacking in siril. 

looks a bit dim so i switched to wizard and it doesn't look much brighter lol

 

hard to tell for sure like this so i think i'll stick with wizard see what i get tomorrow go from there. 

* looking back after posting, i think skull looks slightly better. maybe?

Edited August 1 by TiffsAndAstro

[900SL]

You have the AP version of St Vitus Dance. Just stick to one target fer chrissakes 😀

You won't see much in 20 minutes exposures wide band. Get 4 hrs plus and come back

[AstroMuni]

13 hours ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

I think that good advice, but I'm gonna try flaming skull for one night. See how it looks if anything.

Have you tried the Veil nebula? Its pretty bright and shows up quite well without filters. This is an hours worth of data from bortle 6 with the 130pds + ASI533mc + UV/IR cut filter only.

Edited August 2 by AstroMuni

[TiffsAndAstro]

1 hour ago, 900SL said:

You have the AP version of St Vitus Dance. Just stick to one target fer chrissakes 😀

You won't see much in 20 minutes exposures wide band. Get 4 hrs plus and come back

I stuck with wizard until 3:45 then did flats. If I get something promising I'll stick with wizard rest of august or until 10 hours on it.

I also got 55 x 60sec subs of M17 between chimney and roof of neighbours house  including maybe 15 minutes wasted for meridian flip. which my setup did all by itself again though i was sitting staring at it whole time.

Edited August 2 by TiffsAndAstro

[TiffsAndAstro]

3 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Have you tried the Veil nebula? Its pretty bright and shows up quite well without filters. This is an hours worth of data from bortle 6 with the 130pds + ASI533mc

Yeah I tried little while back a 4 panel mosaic test on veil, it's big and bright but I need more hours on it.

I do like super nova remnants a lot. 

[WolfieGlos]

It might not be suitable for your focal length, but M27 Dumbbell Nebula is actually really bright in RGB, a lot more than I thought. I've just captured 12 hours on it this week (4 clear nights in a row!!), so I hope to have something decent from it.

Just for reference, I captured the Wizard 2 years ago in August in RGB using my 72ED, this is 8 hours in my Bortle 4 with a modded DSLR. My best process at the time, and there's probably more data there to be pulled out, but I need to re-process with PI and have another stab at it some time. But a dualband filter will make a world of difference.

Note I'm in Bortle 4.

Edited August 2 by WolfieGlos

[TiffsAndAstro]

36 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

It might not be suitable for your focal length, but M27 Dumbbell Nebula is actually really bright in RGB, a lot more than I thought. I've just captured 12 hours on it this week (4 clear nights in a row!!), so I hope to have something decent from it.

Just for reference, I captured the Wizard 2 years ago in August in RGB using my 72ED, this is 8 hours in my Bortle 4 with a modded DSLR. My best process at the time, and there's probably more data there to be pulled out, but I need to re-process with PI and have another stab at it some time. But a dualband filter will make a world of difference.

Note I'm in Bortle 4.

honestly, this is really really helpful. i'm just doing a quick process on what i got last night. will be interesting to see how mine compares with same scope but bortle 4. at a rough estimate my 533  osc is possibly an entire fstop faster than my dslr due to quantum efficiency, but does have smaller pixels  

might have to crop mine a lot though due to tree/chimney along one side

m27 dumbell is on my list but not sure its all that big in my fov and need to check how high it is. i got m57 a while back and it was tiny

 

Edited August 2 by TiffsAndAstro

[Sarek]

I had a go at the Wizard earlier this week. Only just over 90 minutes worth of 300s subs with the L ExTreme filter.  I will definitely have a more extended go at this target when skies permit.

Its such a long time since I did any processing in PI that I struggled to remember how to do it!  I have probably over cropped this.

 

 

[TiffsAndAstro]

15 minutes ago, Sarek said:

I had a go at the Wizard earlier this week. Only just over 90 minutes worth of 300s subs with the L ExTreme filter.  I will definitely have a more extended go at this target when skies permit.

Its such a long time since I did any processing in PI that I struggled to remember how to do it!  I have probably over cropped this.

 

 

omg 90 minutes that's ridiculous.

if you had said 20 hours i would have thought "yeah fair enough"

[carastro]

I would take the advice above and do the Wall or Veil nebula until you get a dual narrowband filter. 

Edited August 2 by carastro

[Elp]

16 minutes ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

omg 90 minutes that's ridiculous.

if you had said 20 hours i would have thought "yeah fair enough"

This is why I said wait until you get a narrowband filter. You're essentially wasting your time otherwise doing snippets of one target after another. I've done emissions in 30-60mins but I'm using fast and larger optics, the filter however was the most contributing factor.

[TiffsAndAstro]

Just now, Elp said:

This is why I said wait until you get a narrowband filter. You're essentially wasting your time otherwise doing snippets of one target after another. I've done emissions in 30-60mins but I'm using fast and larger optics, the filter however was the most contributing factor.

i agree im wasting time, but its summer and not very dark. using the time to tweak guiding unsuccesfully and at the least get data for rbg stars maybe. 

[Elp]

Just as you've seen the difference with your new camera, a narrowband filter will be like the difference from the jump from mono television or photography to colour, it's, that, significant.

At present, I'd be imaging the larger galaxies however small they may appear (you can always crop), or open or closed clusters as you can keep these short like less than 60mins. The iris NGC7023 is also always usually in a favourable position and you can image it as is, but you'll need hours to get that dark dust separation.

M27 is a good shout too, I'm doing it at 300mm and it images fine, you'll get the central part fairly quickly, getting to the second outer shell and beyond takes some work however (time and processing).

 

Edited August 2 by Elp

[TiffsAndAstro]

quick stack and stretch of 54 x 60 sec M17 and 8 x 120 sec flaming skull, shows some vague skull likeness but not much flames. doing same on wizard now but its very bright here so my stretches will be dubious

 

[TiffsAndAstro]

3 minutes ago, Elp said:

Just as you've seen the difference with your new camera, a narrowband filter will be like the difference from the jump from mono television or photography to colour, it's, that, significant.

At present, I'd be imaging the larger galaxies however small they may appear (you can always crop), or open or closed clusters as you can keep these short like less than 60mins. The iris NGC7023 is also always usually in a favourable position and you can image it as is, but you'll need hours to get that dark dust separation.

M27 is a good shout too, I'm doing it at 300mm and it images fine, you'll get the central part fairly quickly, getting to the second outer shell and beyond takes some work however (time and processing).

 

yeah iris nebula probably best broadband available right now. need to look more at m27 if its visible, but if you say its good at 300mm i should be more than fine at 400mm.

ill see how wizard looks and then either get it to 10hours or do iris or m27 for rest of august. 

[Elp]

Planetary nebulas generally work quite well because they're small, so their signal is concentrated onto a smaller camera pixel area so you get more of a pixel response in the signal area as they're receiving more photons compared to a larger target which covers more sensor area with its emitting photons spread out. It's essentially how focal reducers give you more "speed".

Edited August 2 by Elp

[TiffsAndAstro]

4 hours ago, Elp said:

Planetary nebulas generally work quite well because they're small, so their signal is concentrated onto a smaller camera pixel area so you get more of a pixel response in the signal area as they're receiving more photons compared to a larger target which covers more sensor area with its emitting photons spread out. It's essentially how focal reducers give you more "speed".

but they tend to be on the small side and for me as a beginer that's not too appealing. i thought my go at m57 was alright if i cropped right in, but even so

my quick test of wizard is ok. whether its enough to make me want to add another session or two im not sure...

im also struggling to see my focus tube slop issue. i had the focus lock very very slack almost falling out of its screw hole. all these are barely cropped if at all. 

 

 

Edited August 2 by TiffsAndAstro