M8-M16-M17-M20 with LX200-10"-F6.3

[FOOTPRINT]

Hi All,
Well after all the rain we finally had a couple of nice clear nights, so herewith results of my efforts, all Pix. 6 Min. Exp. at ISO800, and are 5 Exp.of each, DF removed, guided with ED80, The Lx200-10" plus an F-6.3 Focal reducer using a Modded Canon EOS300D.
M20 is a cropped Pix.

cheers..............Jim

[JohnG]

Nice shots there Jim, plenty of detail present. :thumbsup:

Cheers

JohnG

[Dennis]

Wow Jim - you have been busy! What a terrific set of images. I'm very impressed by the nice composition, processing and good guiding for such a relatively long focal length - well done! I just love the colours in the Triffid.

Cheers

Dennis

[tornado33]

Excellent, all 4 of the Milky ways best, and shooting all same exposure times gives an excellent comparison of the 4 objects :)
Scott

[FOOTPRINT]

Hi All,
Thanks for the kind comments, well we are back into the rain again, and its supposed to rain all week, I know the rest of the state is dry and id be happy to give them some of what weve been having, I feel enough is enough the dam is overflowing, tanks the same, ground is boggy, no good for astrophotography- complain-complain.

Re the M8-M20 Pix. the cooler weather helped as regards noise in the Pix, it was about 15 C. when these Pix. were taken (not like summer at 27 C.) and with a set of 4 matching DFs taken at the same time the noise was eliminated, ive found that 4-6 Dfs added do a much better job than just one though not quite certain why, maybe someone on the forum can explain.

cheers.......Jim

[Striker]

Great presentation Jim.

What a great part of the sky this is...so many beautiful targets.

Well done on the images again Jim.

[Lester]

Great shots there Jim,

excellent colour. Notices a bit of star trailing in the Trifid shot. You may be getting primary mirror shift during capture. Using a seperate guide scope will not pick up the movement. The only way around it is to use a off-axis guider.

Just a thought.

[rogerg]

Jim,

Very nice images. I particularly like the vibrant colour.

It's a shame you have a little trailing and that the M20 shot doesn't seem quite as sharply focused as the others, but they are still very good images.

You say guided with an ED80 - was that using a camera for autoguiding or manual guilding by you using an eyepiece & correcting for errors?

Regarding the dark frames - I believe it to be quite 'normal' to take several dark frames than just one. Usually I'll take a series of 10. I examine them individually to make sure there's nothing abnormal about any of them - sometimes spikes of brightness will appear randomnly that are not consistent between the dark frames and I don't want those incorrectly being subtracted from the final image.

I'm not good with technical terminology and all that, so my rather simplistic view of why the several DF's make a better result is simply the same as why several light frames make a better result - improving the signal to noise ratio, where in this case the signal is the noise we want and the noise is the random occasional noise that we don't want to subtract.

Does your software cater for subtracing BIAS and Flat frames also? They would of course be another step in helping, and the reason I think of them is because as with dark frames, I would shoot 10 of each and average them out.

I wish my un-modified 350D could get that nice colourful nebulosity :(

Roger.

[xelasnave]

Fine effort Jim
alex

[EzyStyles]

magnificant shots Jim. colours came out nice.