M42 Finally..!

[Darth Takahashi]

Well the sky finally clear last night and I manage to get a few subs of M42. Unfortunately, MaxIm DL5 let me down big time! For the first time in my life I tried to use it for both imaging and guiding and I have to say that the guiding part of the program is terrible. Furthermore this also had unexpected consequences for my DARKS and BIAS frames which contained the brighter image data?

The main problem with guiding was that my G41 was making huge guiding movements when calibrating, so I dialed everything back and it was still no better. In fact, I have the distinct feeling that the subs would have been better without any guide corrections.

Anyway, I managed to salvage the Luminescent subs to make this reasonable monochrome image.

Telescope: Sky90

Mount: Gemini G41

Camera: ST2000XM

Filter wheel: FLI-CW7

I hope you like my effort despite all the problems above I'm relieved to have had the opportunity to capture this beautiful nebula.

Neil.

[peter shah]

Its not been a normal imaging night without problems!....lovely structure:cool:

[Darth Takahashi]

Thanks for the comments Peter,

Yes its been a really struggle last night just to capture this image. The weather has been terrible so far this year.

Neil.

[ollypenrice]

From what I hear, Maxim is a good guiding programme but somewhat complicated to master. I use AstroArt which Ian King describes as a good second to Maxim for giuding. I bet that if you posted a request for for help in setting up Maxim's guiding you would get some good pointers. Peter Vasey uses Maxim to guide his G41 (or is it a G42?) and he works at very long focal lengths so the system can work well.

The image looks really promising, just needing some short Trapezium subs to finish.

As Peter Shah says, whoever had a hasle free night in this lark??

Keep smiling,

Olly