My image of M17 Swan Nebula captured on Tuesday night in Sydney
Conditions were suppose to be great but the first 50% of my subs where below par, stars not sharp and lots of noise in the raw files
I salvaged the last 50% of the 2 minute subs which were slightly better as they were captured from 40 degrees to around 70 degrees Alt
My guiding was poor and dithering was knocking the mount around a fair bit , it never really settled back to stable guiding
There was low lying cold moist air hanging around from about 10.30pm onwards and it got worse later in the night . After M17 , I tried to image Jupiter around midnight and couldn’t even focus properly it was just a fuzz ball . So shutdown and went to bed. I image from about 20m above river level at the bottom of a hill in my suburb , not the greatest location for astrophotography but conditions were poor at least from my location
6” f6 newt and HEQ5 mount
32 x 2 minute subs
25 x darks
ISO 800
Canon 600D unmodded
BYEOS
PHD2
Stacked in DSS
Processed in Startools
Tony and Alex
Thank you for the kind comments
Yes the 6” newt is a great scope for AP , not popular, but does the job nicely
I’m surprised a lot of beginners go straight for a 80mm refractor , maybe collimation scares them off who knows. My scope cost me $299.00 but it’s worth it’s weight in gold , the images prove that I think
Heading down the coast on Monday to our holiday pad for 10 or 12 days so I’ll be setting up the 8” f5 newt , I hope we get some clear nights
Cheers
Some lovely detail & colours there Martin. Very promising for just over an hour of data. I feel your pain regarding throwing away half your subs, we have chosen a pursuit which is largely governed by elements beyond our control. In spite of this we battle on
Cheers,
Tony
Thanks Tony
Heading down the coast next week to my weekender and dust off the 8” f5 newt and do some imaging under Bortle 3 skies
Might even get the 12” Goto dob out and observe some nebulas and clusters before the moon get to big
Cheers
