On the back of the clear skies last night here in Brisbane, I was able to get a good shot at M8, The Lagoon Nebula. This was also the first time that I've been able to have all the components in my imaging train hooked up. This means that I had my MPCC attached to my QHY8L along with the UHC-S filter.
I managed to get 35, 3 minute exposures but 2 of them were bad so I was left with 1 hour and 39 minutes worth of exposure. Guiding was done using PHD, although some of the stars ended up egg shaped. However, with some nifty little computer routines these eggs are now round! Dark, flats and dark flats were taken and the resultant image is attached to this post.
Now before I began processing my data, I wanted to read up on just what makes M8 tick - what stars are providing the light, etc. Once I had an understanding of this I tried to keep everything in relative harmony... I don't know where those two words came from but I like the phrase!!
Anyway here is my interpretation of M8, The Lagoon Nebula...
I've spent a lot of time collimating my scope (well actually a lot of time swearing and worrying that my scope would never be usable again) so was very happy with the result. I knew I'd captured some decent data when I saw the first sub downloaded to my laptop. I even tried to get my family to come out and look at the subs - reluctantly my wife finally relented!
Focusing is a breeze now with the remote focuser and the QHY8L is such a nice little camera to use - I'm extremely happy with what it can do. Having Startools has also helped my processing skills come along in leaps and bounds.
Marc, I have one of those giant picture frames that has spots for lots of different size photos on the wall at home and I know exactly which spot this image is going into. It might not be the pool room but it's close enough!!
Andrew, the detail is one of the things that I'm most happy with in this photo along with how I feel I've represented the light.
Jeanette, I glad you think my image is beautiful - you've given us so many wonderful images to look at on IIS it's about time that I posted something half-decent to repay you!!!
That's a fantastic rendition of M8 Mario. Congrats!
You've really brought out some great detail for sure and have really got the rig singing. The newt might be a bit more mucking around to get configured for imaging but I still reckon an 8" is a fantastic way to get into imaging at a decent price/performance point and all too frequently underrated. It can be easy to "burn out" the brighter stars but careful sub choice and processing helps - really reflects how much light you're sucking down in a short time.
Can't wait to see where you go next
Really, that is amazing good for someone on the CCD learning curve.
Rob, you're right in regards to the 8" scope - it really does gather enough light to be fantastic but still allows me to play around with exposure times so that I don't burn out the stars too much. That I can do by myself in the processing!!
I really love my setup as it is now and am just waiting for some clear skies to continue imaging. I've been in the US for the last month but apparently the weather in Brisbane's been pretty ordinary. This means I didn't miss any imaging time!!
Very nice Mario. The detail is great and it fairly fills the screen. One thing I do notice is the slight appearance of dark halos around some of the stars. This is usually caused by either deconvolution or over energetic sharpening, some thing I am good at myself.
Just being very pickey so don't take it to heart. It is a very nice Lagoon. One of the best I have seen for a while. I also would have liked to see a little more blue tint to some stars and the core area which is quite rich in OIII.
Looking very good. You have the 8L humming. Well done.
Thanks for your thoughts. I struggled with the halos and finally decided that this was probably the best I was going to get if I still wanted to bring out the detail.
I'm certainly interested in your thought's of the core being rich in OIII as I wanted to keep the colours as close as possible to what they theoretically should be. I actually read up on M8 before processing my data so that I understood what was happening in this beastie.
Beautiful Mario.
