Two Left Feet

[jjjnettie]

Rick Stevenson and myself now share a banner as winners of Picture of the Month on the "Disciples of the Dark Arts" group.
Rick won the CCD section, I got the gong for the DSLR section. :)
It's a real honour to have been chosen as there are many other talented imagers sharing their work there. I know some of the members also belong to IIS, so thanks.

[GTB_an_Owl]

congats jjj

geoff

[jjjnettie]

I was wearing my freezer suit while imaging, so I should be thanking you too Geoff. Couldn't have sat out there all night without it. :)

[RickS]

Congrats from me too, JJJ! I must have surfed in on your tailwind :)

[GTB_an_Owl]

yes - they are a very important piece of gear jjj, especially for those that want to make the most of their astro experience

best accessory i ever purchased

geoff

[geoffw89]

Great comparison images, and very well done to you both.

Would it be possible to give a brief run down on the capture and processing techniques and why they look so different please, for us complete novices?

[RickS]

Thanks, Geoff.

I used a mono camera with filters. Jeanette used a DSLR (one shot colour sensor) and much shorter exposures. There's a reasonable difference in FOV due to differences in focal length and sensor size. I expect our processing was fairly different too since we used different software.

Details for my image were:

Mount: Astro-Physics AP900
Scope: Tak FSQ-106ED
Camera: Sbig STL11K, Astrodon Gen 2 filters
Guiding: Tak FS-60C and Lodestar
Focuser: Atlas
Exposures: 54x300s Lum, 14x300s each R, G & B + some 30s subs
Processing: PixInsight

Cheers,
Rick.

[Octane]

Congratulations, guys. :)

I should participate in that group a bit more. :)

H

[geoffw89]

Thanks Rick. There certainly seems a lot more dark in your image. Is that processing or the natural tendencies of using mono and filters with subs?

[RickS]

Thanks, H. It's a good bunch of people and you get to see a lot of northern objects.



It takes a lot of exposure time to get decent signal to noise ratio in the dark areas and a cooled camera, longer exposures and doing Luminance with a mono camera certainly helps. It's still possible with an OSC camera, though. I also tried deliberately to bring out the dark stuff, so the processing has emphasised it as well.

Cheers,
Rick.

[geoffw89]

Great to know. So much to explore and learn.

[andyc]

Congrats JJJ and Rick! Long live the Great Foot :) I've requested to join the group, looks like a good place to learn more about imaging :thumbsup: