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M42 & Ring Nebula

msinclairinork

By msinclairinork
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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msinclairinork

msinclairinork

Posted
Posted

Well it all started with a look out the window at about 14:00 yesterday, i seen blue skies all round, checked the forecast and it said, i would be good until midnight so..set up the gear and waited for darkness.

Darkness fell and the weather was clear. But already everything was soaking in dew! thank god i bought dew heaters the other day! :D...didn't get one for the guide scope however :D

So still havn't tried guiding yet.

So tried a few test shots...nothing but blurred streaks!:)

Spent the next 3hrs trying to figuire out why the mount was not tracking...looked at my polar alignment about half a dozen times which is a real pain without an illuminated rectule...another purchase required for that.

Tried unpluging-plugging in cables bla bla then it occured to me to get new batteries for the moters, tried that too no avail.

By this time i was fed up i was about to quit astrophotography all togeather. So i decided seen as it was clear to cheer up my spirits by having a visual look, so had a nice spy a jupiter, andromeda, and a double cluster.

Then i thought ,wait a minuite here? my mount is tracking when iv got the EP in fine....must of been a cable snag! :p

So put the camera back in and....WALLA!! tracking comfortably for 60secs didn't go much further because it was just working and i was happy with that. So slewed round to the Ring neb and WOW it was their well...only just...it sure is small and faint! but anyway left it running for one hours worth of 60 second subs and got my 2nd DSO in the bag...sort of..just the processing to sort out now.

Then orion was shinig! calling me!! So had a crack at the wonderfull Great orion nebula...and WOW WOW WOW my jaw hit the floor!!!:)

Just one 60second sub and it is all their, bright colourfull and detailed! So tried for an hour but only got 20mins before the clouds rolled in...packed up at 2:30am and just as i got in the door with the gear the heavens opened and it rained hard so i was very lucky their.

Anyway all those problems and head scratching doesn't mean a thing when you get a result and boy oh boy am i a happy man now!

So here is M42 with just 6 x 60second useable subs in the end.

ISO800, stacked in DSS tweaked in PS CS3.

and.

The Ring nebula 27 x 60second useable subs @ ISO800 and stacked in DSS, 100% crop and image resised..alot! (going to post this one in the help section though as i am sure the pros well help me get more detail out of this one yet) cant seem to get DSS to Drizzle without it running out off memory! :eek:

So like i said this is my 2nd & 3rd DSO so PLEASE PLEASE comment and instruct me on if you think i can do better with these. :p

Equipment used was all thats in my signature.

Sorry for the babiling...still on a high!

Thanks,

Michael

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MikeWilson

MikeWilson

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Well done indeed!

I have just stretched your M42 a little and can see you've captured a really good amount of data in there. This is convincing me that I need to modify my 1000D :)

post-18683-133877501402_thumb.jpg

Remember: more subs = less noise = can process more. Double the subs, halve the noise.

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msinclairinork

msinclairinork

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Thank you for the comments guys!

mike- yea looks like you brought out the faint stuff better their. I do have more subs but i was being very picky in which ones to stack, i might try being less picky.

Euan- don't worry after this there is no turning back! :)

Cheers,

Michael

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MikeWilson

MikeWilson

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do have more subs but i was being very picky in which ones to stack

Be picky. Be very picky.

I'm new to this too, like you and for a while I was just stacking everything and letting DSS sort it out. However whilst this would lead to an image that had a stronger SNR ratio in the darker areas (good) it would bring out faint faults in post processing.

In my recent M45 image I binned about an hour's worth of data for one reason or another. The resulting image came out better with less, but clearer, data.

It's quite easy to test this yourself, stack everything and save then stack again being fussy and save. Compare :)

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SlipperySquid

SlipperySquid

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Nice work Michael! The ring is a tricky one to bring out loads of detail because it's so small!

Love the write up mate and it is a great feeling when everything drops into place and starts working! All the reading and tweaking and setting up and then retweaking then swearing and then kicking the dog...oh the joy :)

Looking forward to seeing some more nice images coming from your stable sir!! Keep up the good work and if all else fails turn to drink :)

Matt.

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