Embarrasingly bad M78.

[ollypenrice]

Why am I posting this? Really out of morbid fascination. Would you believe this noise riddled mess represents nearly ten hours' exposure in the Meade 127. Half was in five minute subs and half in ten minute ones. The long ones were much better.

What's the problem, someone? Anyone?? I think it is just faint and not a target for f7.5., maybe? The best I can hope for is to hit it with a big dose of pure luminance in the mono and use this as an RGB layer once heavily smoothed.

Don't laugh...

Olly

[kev 102 42]

get yer self a DSLR:headbang:

[barkis]

Maybe you're just being too harsh on yourself.

Is some of the bewilderment not due to the unfamiliar look this object is displaying, due to the size of it at f7.5.

I've only ever seen it imaged further out.

Of course I could be talking codswallap.

Ron.

[roundycat]

that's not so bad, have a look at some of the M78's on the APOD archive. Possibly a combination of short subs and one shot colour caused the apparent lack of good signal? I am not convinved the f ratio is a problem. How much longer can you expose for without getting too much star bloat?

Dennis

[ollypenrice]

'get yer self a DSLR'

Yup, I asked for that!!!!!! You got me.

Dennis, I guess as long as I like because I can use the stars from the shorter subs stack in the final version. However, while digging the obs out of a metre of snow I fell on the mount and have nudged the alignment. It was still possible to do ten mins though. Must get that sorted but I didn't want to waste a clear night cos even here they are a bit scarce at the moment.

I have a Tec 140 coming in Feb so a few hours of lum in that should make it behave, but that's what I thought of last night's five hours worth.

Hey, just seen the sky and its clear so I can get back to this tonight. Brill. I think I will go for lum in the other camera.

Olly

[RobH]

Hello Olly,

As you say, quite noisy, but a good image nonetheless, and if you add a bunch of luminance, you should have a cracking image.

Cheers

Rob