Obligatory M42

[Peter.M]

Hi guys and gals, I was invited to pauls to do some imaging last night, and authough I would have loved too prior commitments prevented me from attending. To appease my imaging needs I decided on doing an M42 from home in lrgb. It is amazing how a bright target like this is not affected by sky pollution as much. Any other object would be impossible from my house.

I am intrigued with the stars, in my narrowband images brighter stars have a weird shape ( It didn't bother me that much). I assumed that the stars in my lrgb would be the same, and that more stars would show it because more would be brighter. As seen here that is not the case and the stars are round at all brightnesses. I need to chase down some diffraction to get those classic newtonian spikes though.

The exposures were 5 minutes in length and colours were binned 2x2.

I managed 55 minutes of luminance, and 25 for each colour so its still a baby and the noise shows that. Some short exposures were masked in for the core. I am really excited to see what this scope can do with long exposures when I get guiding more reliable.

Thanks for looking.

Larger
http://www.astrobin.com/full/31779/?mod=none

[Rigel003]

Very nice Peter, especially taken from home. Crazy diffraction patterns on those bright stars.

[Peter.M]

Thanks Graeme, Yes most people are content with 4 spike newtonians somehow I have opted for an 8 spike version....

[strongmanmike]

Nice subtle job mate, to me the diff spikes look awesome :thumbsup:

Mike

[MrB]

Great stuff Peter!
Many thanks for posting your images too, it's given me an idea of what I should be expecting from my little 6" newt... I can see I need to work on my collimation, not getting half the detail you are :/

[Ross G]

Nice looking photo Peter.

Very sharp.

Ross.

[Peter.M]

Thanks Mike, I guess to me the spikes give the stars a definite sense of brightness I dont mind them either.



I am using my cats eye tools for collimation exclusively, I can get the perfect hotspot in main pupil and 2 circles in the offset. It is something that I couldn't get in my 8 inch newt ever ( I think because the focal point was very far away from the tube). When I designed this tube I made the focus as close to the tube as I could. I would love to do some collimation with the camera on the scope, but with a portable setup I would rather be imaging with that time.



Thanks Ross, I am finding that It is easy to get good sharp images with better data. The guiding on my images now continues to amaze me and all from a little finder guider.

[multiweb]

Really nice. Go the spikes! Makes the picture more real. :thumbsup:

[MrB]

I'm using Catseye too, have since nailed collimation but still no joy, have also washed both mirrors, they came out almost looking new, but still no joy. My stars are still bloated and just can't get detail in nebula.

Cleaned mirrors, nicely collimated and good focus pretty much just leaves a poor figure in the primary as the prime suspect :(