Had a go at tge Helix last night before cloud came in.
Its very faint and it could do with many more hous of data.
The cloud came in after 2 hours but its going to high in the sky for the next few weeks so should be able to add to this.
BD 6" Skywatcher
Canon 450d moded
Heq5 unguided
ISO 1600
99 x 60 second lights
Darks, bias, flats subtracted
Stacked in DSS
Processed in Startools
Polished in PS.
Andy
That’s a great unguided image
Nice colours too
Well done !!
Try and get PHD2 guiding up and running sooner than later ( if you can ) you won’t believe what you could under dark skies with a guided 6” newt
Cheers
Thanks Martin,
Ive been a bit slack, well more time poor to get guiding up and running.
Also my 20 year old laptop may slow things down a bit.
After looking at your wonderful images you keep posting i can see what you mean about a 6" newt under clear skies.
Cheers
Andy
Andy
You probably know the requirements of PHD2, but a laptop with just 4GB of ram and a basic processor would do the job ( even a good second hand one )
Plus a 50mm guide scope like an Orion ( replaces the finder scope ) and a ZWO ASI120MM-3 guide camera
A few USB cables
PHD2 free down load
A hour or two of nutting it out
A few good nights for focus, trial and error plus collecting darks
And your up and guiding
Cheers
Thanks Chris
I'm very lucky to have zero light polution here (unless someone turns on the bathroom light) so I could just see it visually in my guide scope to centre it up but longer and more subs would do it justice.
Martin Ive got a guidescope, and a guide camera but my trusty 20 year old XP machine with 1gig of ram will let me down.
Mind you I do all my processing on it but it does take a while.
Last night before I did Helix I took a 3 minute, 10 000 or so frames of Jupiter with the ASI 120mc/s. I loaded this into Registax and 8 hours on its still processing the avi.
Time for a new laptop.
Cheers
Andy
I have an old HP pro WIN7 4g laptop which still runs everything . I was looking at another update also to get more ram. You can shop online through one of the Australian retailers like Officeworks and sometimes get HP or other known brands cheaper than anyone else delivered. Not sure how they do that. All of my HP computers and large printers are still working , so I think a known maker in a business model helps with the most ram and drive space you can afford. Never seems to fail. Makers can not afford to have a bad business model.
Andy
Nice !!
When you start guiding you won’t need the volume of exposures to expose detail as your subs will be longer and produce a lot more detail
Also one noticeable thing will be the shape , sharpness and density of your stars , you will see more diffraction spikes on the dimmer stars as well
I looked at some of my unguided images 3 years ago and couldn’t believe how out of focus I was when zoomed in close plus stars were oval or eggy ( at the time I thought they were great )
Martin
Great colour and detail. 90 sec without guiding and those clean shots stars are a real credit. A lot of dedicated time out there . Must be great to be where it is truly dark and quiet out under the stars.
