A Quick Omega Last Night, South Coast

[Startrek (Martin)]

Been away a week now at my South Coast weekender ( Bortle 3 Skies ) and the weather hasn’t been very cooperative for AP so far ( typical east coast winter weather ) There have been some beautiful sunny winter days but mostly patchy cloudy nights
After polar aligning , with a full moon ascending and cloud imminent ( according to CFN ) I captured about 45 minutes of data on NGC 5139 Omega Centauri ( the big daddy of globular clusters )
8” 5 Bintel GSO newt on an EQ6-R Mount
Canon 600D stock with a Baader coma corrector ( no filters )
ISO 800
Sensor electronics running at 19 to 21 degrees
30 x 90 sec dithered guided subs
15 x darks
Dithered every second frame
PHD2 guiding at 0.75 to 0.80 total rms error ( about the best this mount can guide with nearly 15kg on board ) Guide Star 3.75 to 4.18 therefore excellent seeing conditions ( SNR 39 to 41 )
Goto and tracking EQMOD, StellariumScope and Stellarium
Frame , focus and Capture BYEOS
Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
Processed in Startools V1.5 Linear data set

Comments most welcome

Thanks for looking

[Saturnine (Jeff)]

Another lovely capture, for a quicky, nice tight stars and colours too.

[Fernando]

That is a beautifull Omega Centauri. Congatulations!!!

[PKay (Peter)]

Great result Martin

The cluster has resolved well.
You have got the processing down pat.

I am amazed that you could see the sky at all. I am only a few degrees south and it was 9/10 cloud cover. And last night it rained...

[Startrek (Martin)]

Thanks very much All
It was only a small window of opportunity on Monday night ( 6.30pm to 9.00pm) with a big cloud bank passing through fairly quickly between 7.50pm and 8.20pm ) but conditions were excellent and the guide graph was a pleasure to watch.Its been months since conditions allowed sub arc sec guiding on my rig .Atmospheric conditions during the first part of Winter has been very moist and unstable on the east coast thus far, let’s hope it improves into the second half.
Thanks again

[xelasnave]

Nice work.
Alex

[Crater101 (Warren)]

That's a fantastic result, well done.

[jahnpahwa (JP)]

Originally Posted by Startrek

..... but conditions were excellent and the guide graph was a pleasure to watch.Its been months since conditions allowed sub arc sec guiding on my rig ....

Great image, Martin!

I was expecting clouds all night in Canberra last night, but like you, found excellent seeing from about 8pm for few hours. On the planets and moon I was able to go 400x without issue on the 8" newt, and saw stable features on Jupiter and Saturn that I'd only had wobbly glimpses of before. It was a great night!

[LostInSp_ce]

Top notch again Martin. The colours are perfect!

[Startrek (Martin)]

Originally Posted by LostInSp_ce

Top notch again Martin. The colours are perfect!

Thanks LIS
Conditions were fairly good on Monday night which helps with focus , guiding , resolution and detail
Imaging M17 tonight and conditions are just as good with exception of that big round flood light rising in the east called the moon
See how much data I can capture, going for 2 to 3 hours worth
Thanks again