M45 - The Pleiades (and a request...)

[mdstuart]

My effort at your image..

My wife just loves these stars..

Mark

[MikeWilson]

Beautiful, Mark!

The Christmas Tree cluster will be next year - or at least, after a camera mod and narrowband filters have been added

[Tim]

Have a read here Mike, might help you track down the cause of the reflections

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-tips-tricks-techniques/118008-identifying-cause-reflections.html

[Uranium235]

I had the same problem with my coma corrector + CLS filter. Try removing the coma corrector and see if you get any reflections after that. I guess my coma corrector is not going to be used any more now ive got the Atik (as its chip isnt big enough to pick up coma).

The 150P DS has a much better focuser, and you wont find yourself pushing the drawtube in by hand becuase of the heavy stuff youre hanging off it. Lets face it, the stock focuser on the 150P is probably only designed to carry the weight of an eyepiece. Ive just ordered an upgrade for mine, I will let you know how it works out - apparently its supposed to triple the max payload - if I can fit it correctly

A modded dslr wouldnt make much difference on M45, but it certainly would on anything that contains Ha (Veil, NGC7000, Pacman, etc..).... oh, and M42

[MikeWilson]

Have a read here Mike, might help you track down the cause of the reflections

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-tips-tricks-techniques/118008-identifying-cause-reflections.html

Thanks Tim, and by extension StarlightKnight for the useful links. Like a total doughnut myself I replied in that thread instead of this one. Maybe it's more on topic over there, who knows?

@Uranium235, I think you're right. It's either the CLS-CCD, the MPCC or both. I suspect that the CLS-CCD is reflecting some light back towards the MPCC which is reflecting it back and through the CLS-CCD. Perhaps re-collimation might reduce this effect, who knows? I'm finding the focusser on the 150P holds everything I want to put on it but I'm thinking there's a 2" filter wheel and some 2" narrowband filters in my future and I think that might start to get a bit heavy. I wouldn't want that slipping out and falling on the floor and so I might go for a "DS" tube first to get the stronger focuser.

[russ]

Tried again Mike but not too happy with my version tbh. Not as good as JonH managed.

[MikeWilson]

Hi Russ,

Thanks for that. I really can't choose which version I like best. Both yours and JohnH's are my favourites (although thanks to Celeste and Cloudwatcher for their images too) as they both show a good deal of nebulosity, more so in Russ' image, and a good level of contrast, more so in JohnH's image!

I wonder if I can overlay the two. Would it be possible to get high resolution copies of both, chaps?

Best,

Mike

[JonH]

Hi Mark,

I hadn't saved the first one so I've done another and saved as a high grade jpeg.

Full marks to Cloudwatcher because no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't pull out Father Christmas!

[MikeWilson]

Thanks John,

If you use your imagination you can see him. Stare at an image of Father Christmas for a few seconds and then look at the image with averted vision.

I've PM'ed you - could I get a high res version of this image?

Best,

Mike

[Celeste]

Thanks Mike, I am no photographer as I said but having a play with your image is a good thing for me to practice on Thanks for letting us do that.

[MikeWilson]

You're welcome, Celeste. I really appreciated your work on my image and also others doing so too. It really helps to see what different results can be obtained from the same initial set of data and see how others have processed the image to bring out their own preferred colour balance and/or levels. I'm enjoying processing some other images posted up here too, to get a feel for different data.

It's a long learning curve, but I think it's worth it in the end.

For example, both Russ and Jon have produced two pretty amazing versions of the data. Russ' shows more of the nebulosity and more of the smaller stars, whereas Jon's image cuts the smaller stars in favour of keeping the main stars smaller and brighter.

I've reprocessed Jon's image a little (a very slight levels adjustment and then a Gaussian blur to 1.5 pixels to make it better for print) and this is the one that I'm going to use that one for my Christmas cards this year.

Thank you everyone for your encouragement, tutorials, tips and inspiration.

Clear skies to all and to all a good night (or something like that?).

Mike