First LRGB image: NGC 1365

[Jon]

I'm feeling pretty chuffed today. A couple of months ago I got a mono CCD camera which didn't work properly straight out of the box and had to be sent back to Atik to replace the USB port. It came back last Thursday, and I'm delighted. As well as getting variable star observations accurate to within 0.05 mag, and some nice spectra (my main purpose in getting the camera) I have also got some nice data on some deep sky objects.

The first to come together is this 140:30:30:30 min image of NGC 1365, with an Atik 383l+, 10" SCT with f/6.3 reducer, collected over the the weekend. I'm pleased with this as a first effort. It's pretty heavily cropped as I didn't have the camera in the same orientation for all the different channels so only the central part aligned with all colours and luminance. All part of the learning curve :-)

Thanks for looking.

Jonathan

[LewisM]

NICE!

I am fighting to align my colour subs from my last outing - learning curve indeed, but enjoying it!

[renormalised]

Nice shot there :)

[TimberLand]

Great shot for a tenth go at LRGB let alone the first.

Good to see some else how is trying to do science with their rig. What are you using to separate your spectral data?

I have always planned to do spectral based observations but I'm still improving the setup, a new camera is on the way for me as my next step.

Justin

[Bassnut]

Nice, not bad for a 1st effort, well done, bodes well.

[Jon]

Thanks guys.

Justin, I'm just using a Star Analyser 100 diffraction grating - essentially a 1.25" filter that creates a spectrum. Very much entry level but it's remarkable what you can see. Head over to the spectroscopy section of the forum and you can get an idea. Nova Del 2013 has been amazing from a spectroscopic point of view. All sorts of elemental emission lines as the gunk thrown off the white dwarf's surface in the nova outburst gets ionised by UV, X-Rays etc and then starts to emit light at specific wavelengths; then you can see the blue shift created by the ejecta coming towards us at 1000 kms ... all sorts of stuff. You can see a lot of this with the SA100,

I've got a Spectra-L200 on order for the serious stuff :-)

[Shiraz]

you are right to be chuffed - fine image.

[Larryp]

Looks very good!

[SpaceNoob]

Great image dude, nice work! :)

[stevous67]

My first image was of NGC253, and I couldn't see it until I stretched the hell out of it (it was terrible).

Well done! Great start.

Steve

[Lee]

Great image.... one of my favourite galaxies....

[SkyViking]

That looks like an awesome 1st image, you're certainly off to a great start.

[DavidNg]

Wonderful image already Jon, looking for more soon :)

[Jon]

Thanks for the supportive comments, all. I have been imaging with my DSLR for nearly a year now, and it certainly helps to have things like guiding down pat (this used 10m subs for luminance binned 1x1; 5 min for RGB binned 2x2). But I'm finding aligning and processing LRGB a bit of a dark art ... Seems to have worked here OK, although I've noticed some rings around the foreground stars in the galaxy itself: a devonvolution artefact. Have to learn how to do a star mask ...