Taken a little while back but I've decided to revisit this data to see if I can extract a bit more resolution out of it. Went and stacked 320x120s subs and not just the best 146x120s which had FWHM below 1.8". The difference? Not much.
Not only did doubling the exposure time not make much difference to the background smoothness but it also didn't change the FWHM much either. This is possibly due to the weighting I've used for stacking but it was an interesting test to run.
In the centre the stack it had a FWHM of 1.65" so seeing has been pretty kind. Actually has me considering an AO-X to potentially help eek out a little lower FWHM on the nights of better seeing. Going completely unguided at the moment which has its benefits (never chasing the seeing with guiding) but there is some slow (0.1-1s) atmospheric movements which can potentially be removed with an AO unit.
That's a really nice close up Colin. Big sampling.
See the left over pattern from the debayering process under the bright stars? I got that in PI on the pleiades bright blue stars. I think PI struggles with the drizzle combine when the subs are not dithered enough or the number of subs is too small.
Excellent Colin, loving the detail and structures captured. I was looking at your equipment and was impressed with it. What a lovely setup!
Thanks Daniel, it's starting to get towards the weight limit of the DDM60. I wouldn't really want to go quite as long unguided with a heavier setup as it's likely over 20kg.
The sharpness of that is just stunning. There are pairs of close doubles there that YOU could drive a truck through, whereas we'd have needed a machete.
