Ngc 253 (single imaging run)

[Atmos]

Last night I took my scope out and away from the pure dark skies of Melbourne suburbia to see how it would handle. Seeing wasn't as good as I was hoping considering that it got down to ~2ºC over night, I think it may have been the exceptionally high water content in the air being in a valley :/ Taken from my friends property up near Lake Eildon (Rubicon), took me over an hour and a half to get my PA correct. Learned my lesson, if moving to another location for imaging... ALWAYS remember to change your GPS co-ordinates :P Spent an hour chasing my tail before it occurred to me what was going on.

This is 1xRGB 5xL all 1800s (4 hours).
I think I may have accidentally bumped my guide scope just before I started the RGB as all three have elongated tracking the same magnitude and direction that wasn't there on my test exposure before hand and didn't happen again after I realigned the guide scope. So, all three RGB frames aren't that great but my L are pretty reasonable, happy with how the MaxIM DL Multistar guiding does without PEC training.

Haven't quite worked out why I was getting FWHM of ~5 arcsec yet, seems excessively high, it has had a severe impact on the level of detail achievable in the image. Frames have been Biased, only have 7 darks in my 1800s library at the moment and no flats were taken (forgot my light box, missed dusk and too damn cold for dawn). Probably won't be adding to this target got a while, not until I get my dark site cleared and ready for setup.

[strongmanmike]

...THANK GOD! :prey: :prey2: ...if I see another image of NGC 253 I think I will..:face:..make some l-o-v-e-l-y constructive comments, grrr :lol:

Nah seriously Colin, well done mate, you went to a lot of trouble and endured trying conditions so the result looks pretty good and must be quite rewarding :thumbsup:

Mike

[Atmos]

I saw your comment on the other most recent NGC 253 image and knew I had it coming haha
I was actually expecting to have better seeing than what I did, I could see twinkling earlier in the evening but I was hoping that when the temperature dropped near zero it would have improved.. Was not to be.
Lesson learned, imaging from a valley, surrounded by mountains, not the best idea. At least my dark site is pretty dry, so dry in fact that barely anything grows out there!

[Placidus]

My goodness, what a list of gotcha's you had to contend with, but that which does not kill us allegedly makes us stronger.

I look at some of my early red smudges with a Canon 20Da on a similar scope. You're way, way better.

[RickS]

Great first light from a dark site, Colin! It's always a bit of a challenge and thing go wrong :)

[Shiraz]

not a bad image at all for the conditions - looks like the system is coming together. 5 arcsec is really bad seeing - maybe a local turbulence issue or you just had really bad luck and picked a crook night.

[Atmos]

I am thinking local conditions, mostly being in a valley. I can imagine how that could cause issues looking overhead.

[Atmos]

With both a new camera and telescope still a week or two from arriving, figured it would be the best time to go over some old data.

Quite happy with how it has turned out. This is probably one of those few instances where there is almost no detail loss between the 200kb compression of the galaxy and the full res :P

[rally]

Well worked through Colin,

AP is pretty much the art of problem solving !

Rally

[Atmos]

Thanks Rally. There is so much problem solving in AP, I suppose it is how we learn :)