Globular Cluster M3 - Awesome Object

[LunarLight]

Hey guys

This is the first time I have seen/photographed a globular cluster, fascinating objects! I don't know if any of you guys have seen Carl Sagans' Cosmos but there is a scene in that where he wonders about what it would be like to live around a star in a globular cluster. He imagines that there wouldn't just be multiple sun rises but an entire galaxy rise! now that's a awesome thought and something that crossed my mind whilst thinking of it!

Any back to the photograph.... I am aware that my monitor might not be correctly calibrated. It looks fine on my monitor but it may not on others, if there is anything glaringly wrong with it please let me know.

Also a lot of the subs were shot through steam rising from a vent thanks to my neighbour down stairs when she switched her central heating on so I lost some of them and I think it affected the quality a bit.

Unguided: 27 subs at 60 seconds (originally 40 but had to reject a lot due to steam) 10 darks, 50 bias and I still haven't got the hang of flats so I wasn't able to get any on this outing so whether right or wrong I used some from a previous outing.

feedback welcome, and thanks in advance :-)

This is more or less the full image, I cropped it slightly to remove the effect of stacking around the edge

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This is a cropped and enlarged version, it looses quality in the enlargement but meh I am still happy with it

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[greenkat]

Thats a fantastic first attempt LL, you should be well pleased with it

[jgs001]

Looks very nice to me, loads of detail and clear colours.

[DarkerSky]

M3 is a personal favourite for me. Well done

[ollypenrice]

Darned crisp for an unguided image!

In fact darned crisp.

Olly

[Deneb]

Thats a very good effort unguided & defined well....

Nadeem.

[Psychobilly]

Very Nice...

Using flats from a previous session can be ok if nothing has changed - Camera position,Focus, dirt etc...

If you optics and sensors are clean then old flats can be pretty useful for tackling the worst of the gradients in an image...

Peter...

[Sam]

Fantastic image. Globs are great imaging objects and you've a great job with plenty of resolution right to the core!

[661-pete]

Very good first go at a glob: hopefully you'll be trying some more as the summer advances (have a browse around Ophiuchus for some good examples). And nicely done, can't see any fault in it. There is a very slight gradient on the left-hand edge in the wider field (not the crop) but then my monitor is rather 'bright' and I pick these things up.

M3 is - oddly - one of the ones I've missed out imaging so far, though I've had a good look at it visually. Ought to do it one day as a step towards completing my collection of favourite globs - but maybe it'll have to wait till next year now, for me...

[LunarLight]

Thanks for all the comments guys, I very much appreciate it :-)

Psychobilly - Thanks for the advice I will bear that in mind.

my flats are terrible, I have no idea how to take them really or what I am meant to be doing to get them. All the things I have read, frankly, fly way over my head. I am still very new to photography so I dont fully understand it yet.

Do you have an example of what a flat looks like? I saw one on the internet once and it looked totally different from mine which confused me so im not sure if he one I saw was odd or if mine are just wrong.

661-pete - Yeah I am looking forward to getting some more globs.

Thing is were I live is very restricted, my house blocks out much of the eastern view and the surrounding houses blocks out the view closer to the horizon in all directions so I miss out on much of the good stuff which sucks.

Hopefully as the year goes by M13 will rise a little higher slightly earlier so I will be able to get that. At the minute I am collecting data on M109 so I should have that picture done soon then onto other things :-)

Yeah I noticed the gradient to, once I figure out how to do flats properly hopefully I will be able to remove those things