Evening all,
Continuing on with my saga (tragic tale, perhaps?) of the Megalens, I seem to have the focus sorted out after some reviewing of Ekos' settings. I'm still not super-happy with it, but this image is a lot better than my 'first light' image.
This time, I remembered to turn the guiding on.
Looking at the finished image, the focus looks a bit soft, which is probably an issue with the lens - optics have come a very long way since this thing was made.
The stacked image wasn't too bad, although I'd really love to get out to a dark sky and see how this lens performs, as the signal was pretty well swamped under all the light pollution. I suspect that more imaging time under darker skies would really bring out the colour in the galaxy - this one is rather beige...
I followed my usual stacking and processing workflow in Siril. I did try the 'Star Resynthesis' option in the 'Star Processing' menu after I had separated the stars from the galaxy/background. This option is brilliant - the odd-shaped stars are changed to completely round. I have no idea how this works, but I'll definitely remember to use it when I have odd-shaped stars again. The only issue is that further processing of the star layer requires a gentle hand, as several of the larger stars had a visible 'box' around them if I stretched the layer too much, or pushed too hard with the brightness / contrast in Affinity.
Image details:
* Gain: 100
* Offset: 10
* Temperature: 0 degrees C
* Exposure: 30 seconds
* Frames: 240 Lights, 50 Darks (2 hours integration in total)
* Filter: UV/IR Cut
* Stacked and pre-proc'd in SiriL, finished in Affinity Photo
Equipment:
Megalens @ 1000mm / HEQ5-Pro / ASI183MC-Pro / SV165+SV305 / Kstars/Ekos
As always, criticism / comments / feedback very much appreciated.
Cheers,
V.
