Omega Nebula

[PeterEde]

I can see I'm going to need a Nebula filter or 2
Omega Nebula (http://astrob.in/123546/0/)

[cometcatcher]

Looks like you're doing fine without a nebula filter. Just give it some more time.

[PeterEde]

Don't filters draw out other colours?

[RickS]

Nice image, Peter.

Narrowband filters reduce the effect of light pollution significantly but give you a false colour image (and you need a mono camera to make best use of them.)

Cheers,
Rick.

[PeterEde]

So no filter necessary

[raymo]

Looks great Peter. You are using a small scope; as Kevin said, it just
needs more time. I understand that many people that want APO quality
images are restricted to small ones by the high cost of larger ones, but
this means that they get far less imaging done in a given time. I would
have thought that the purchase of a 6 or 8" Newt[ from about $200 used]
would allow easier tackling of fainter DSOs.
raymo

[cometcatcher]

Well it depends on the object, the camera and how bad the LP is. Most of them attenuate the yellow/orange part of the spectrum and some take out the blue too so you're not shooting with the full spectrum anymore. If you want to experiment, try a cheapy like the Sky watcher nebula filter and see what it does.

[PeterEde]

No problem. I would like to guide in time. But I may have cost my self more in buying the drive motors and not a goto that can take autoguide.
We live and learn

[cometcatcher]

You can always guide manually. Get a guidescope and camera like you would for autoguiding. You still need a PC and a guiding program like PHD. Bring up the cross hairs on PHD and keep the star centered with the hand controller. This method is a bit easier on the neck than a reticle eyepiece and works just as well. Then you can expose for as long as you like.

[PeterEde]

Can I mod the motor controller to incorporate guiding? I'm sure there's a way to hack into the controller. Otherwise I'll plod along with what I have till I can get away with another $2K expenditure on mount and guiding gear.

[LightningNZ]

Peter - I don't use any guiding and am having no problem getting 3-4 minute subs with just using the polar alignment scope.

Your image is nice btw. Just needs more signal to average out the noise. You can also use the Lab colour noise smoothing technique in Photoshop, GIMP or whatever to clean that up a bit. Before you do any stretching, change to Lab colour mode, select the 'a' channel and Gaussian blur it a few pixels: 3 to 5 pixels should do. Do the same to the 'b' channel. Change back to the RGB colour mode. The colour noise should now be greatly suppressed.

[cometcatcher]

I vaguely remember seeing mods done to non autoguide controllers adding an ST4 port. Can't remember where I saw it. I think it was in the classifieds here some time back. It must be possible.

[PeterEde]

Polar scope? I thought that was pretty much useless down here?
I guess it's one thing to align by EP through the scope but that's not exactly aligning the mount is it :(
Is there a polar scope to give enough X for the EQ3 I have?



I thought I'd seen a post for it too. then using PHD to align. More research required

[LightningNZ]

The EQ3 by default has a hole up the middle to take an optional polar alignment scope. The standard Skywatcher one has the stars of Octans marked in it. Seems to work really well for me. You can always use drift alignment to tweak things but I wouldn't need that unless I wanted to push beyond 5 minute subs.