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Old 20-10-2020, 09:13 AM
jahnpahwa (JP)
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NGC 253 - Sculptor galaxy

Man, we've had a bad run of weather in Canberra. So many relatively clear days and absolutely horrible nights. Another new moon phase down the drain The past week has been a write off, coming week too. I had about 90mins of clear sky last night.



Very keen to test my new scope, i bodged up a series of barely-contacting extensions, nose piece of camera backed way out, and got enough back spacing to focus on the Tak fc100dc. Pic of that shoddiness attached. I wanted to check if the focuser could handle my camera and filter wheel, wanted to see how flat the field is before the flattener arrives, and wanted to see if it was sharp. No bahtinov mask meant I just pressed my 8" one from the newt onto the front of the dew shield ad did my best. The single speed focuser seems ok, and this method yielded a decent result.



Flattener and fitting bahtinov are on their way. This is only about 70mins of RGB data from last night before clouds again rolled in. I'm happy with the image scale at 740mm FL, and am surprised by the flatness of the field. This is a crop of about the middle 60% of the frame, and seems ok to me. There is probably some tilt going on, but small sensors seem to shrug that off pretty well.



All but 12mins of green channel was rejected by the pixingisht stack, so it was kind of an uphill battle to balance colours. I also did a version throwing lum into the mix, but I think I prefer this one.



astrobin https://www.astrobin.com/full/8o1cwc/0/?nc=all
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Last edited by jahnpahwa; 20-10-2020 at 10:04 AM.
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  #2  
Old 20-10-2020, 11:06 AM
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aiming for 2nd Halley's

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it's sharp :-) impressive amount of dust lane detail for relatively short window of opportunity (and don't feel too bad about the weather ...Brisbane ain't any better right now and looks to be a night time washout for at least the next two weeks).
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Old 20-10-2020, 11:25 AM
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Some lovely detail in there. Well done considering the challenges you had.
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Old 20-10-2020, 11:38 AM
jahnpahwa (JP)
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Thanks guys

Robert, I don't know how people deal with weeks and weeks of bad weather! Maybe I'll get better at it with time. I was standing on my picnic table, trying to peek further East swearing at the sky for a solid 10mins last night when the first bank of clouds rolled through All three of my neighbours are now well aware that I stand outside in the middle of the night, and I'm sure they all had a laugh.
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Old 22-10-2020, 12:20 PM
Startrek (Martin)
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JP
Lovely image of NGC 253 considering conditions, amount of data and a relatively short focal length at 740mm to chase after dim mag 8 galaxies
Not an easy target
Well captured and processed
Martin
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Old 22-10-2020, 02:31 PM
jahnpahwa (JP)
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Cheers Martin.


I was going to upgrade my mount to get my newt singing at 1m focal length, but thought that constraining myself to stuff that will ride on the HEQ5 might help to curb upgradeitis, for a while at least! 740mm, or 770mm with flattener, and the zwo 1600 is pretty much bang on 1" per pixel, like an F4 8" imaging newt.... just a hell of a lot slower


I moved onto NGC300 the next night for three-and-a-bit hours. THAT is a faint one for my set up! Will have to wait til next new moon to keep chugging there... could be a real epic!
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Old 22-10-2020, 11:58 PM
Fernando
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Nice pic! congratulations!
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