1st stacked and processed Nebula

[Startrek]

My first attempt at stacking and processing a Nebula
Location : Sydney
M8 Lagoon Nebula
30 x lights at 25sec
15 x darks at 25 sec
No flats
Canon 600D stock
Unguided
150mm f6 newt on HEQ5 mount
Targeted via EQMOD , StellariumScope and Stellarium
Captured and acquired via BYEOS
Stacked in DSS
Processed in Startools ( took me 4 hours to get a result )

Can only improve

[Gavin1234]

Great work Martin. I love those blueish/purple shots of m8.

[Atmos]

You're getting some nice detail in the core of the Lagoon :thumbsup:

[xelasnave]

You are really getting it happening nice effort.
Alex

[Startrek]

Thanks All

Yes pretty happy with the capture and processing,just need to get my autoguiding working so I can reduce the ISO and increase the exposure time beyond my current 1 minute limit. Nebulas deserve more exposure time to bring out the detail

Really having fun now with this hobby

[xelasnave]

Try 120 at 30 or 60 seconds you will be surprised ...it has a lot to do with total exposure a d you can do that at many different exposure speeds.
I was forced to do the best with 30 seconds..I built up near three hours over diffet sessions...not realising I could stack the lot in time...but this new computer manages huge deep sky stacker loads...but I was really surprised by my last Lagoon I posted given it was 30 seconds at an iso so high I never would use it in yhe old days...anys all at 1600 iso.
So approx 3 hours of 30 second captures...and that image had very little noise ti start with I expect because there were so many captures.
O ject movement minimised noise and startools seems to help big time with noise reduction in other images that have had bad noise.... No darks flats or ias for that image either...
I see short exposures as a popr mans adaptive optics..sooner or later you get a decent 30 capture and if you build up a big bank of them and stack your best ot sortta works well given bad polar align.
Alex

[xelasnave]

Even with exact polar align and auto guide I cant go past 2 minutes most times...still adjusting stuff...even tbough a new mount it probably could do with a pull down and lookat.
Alex

[Startrek]

Thanks Alex for the advice, well received
I would still like to get my autoguiding up and running and nail some 2 to 5 minute exposures
Martin

[vlazg]

Hi Martin, nice 1st effort at processing. Keep it up.

It looks like your focus is a little bit off, hard to focus a dslr, maybe a Bahtinov mask will help.
I don't know much about backyard Eos but I think there is also a focusing aid

[Startrek]

George

The focus is out a bit due to transferring the image file to jpeg on my Astro laptop then send to my desktop and then to IIS
I use the focusing tool FWHM on BYEOS and it’s works well. I also moved my primary mirror towards the focuser with 5mm spacers and that gave me more adjustment at prime focus

Cheers

Martin

[xelasnave]

Martin just get another 150☺stack all of them.
Alex