NGC 3372 Ha

[Atmos]

Taken me a few nights to get 4.75 hours of data, mostly because I haven't woken up to refocus. Like last night, planned on getting up at 1am to refocus, woke up at 4:30 so missed on another potential 3 hours of imaging. Same thing the night before. Moral of the story, need to get automated focusing setup (Meru has a draft print of a bracket on the way) so then I can blissfully sleep through the night :)

This is a combination of 22 frames ranging from 10-30 min (mostly 15m). Haven't done any processing other than play with the curves. As noisy as the KAF-8300 is in narrowband, it does a pretty reasonable job :) Towards to the top and bottom of the frame there are some lines from stacking, still playing with rejection to try to remove those. They all but disappear if I do a VERY hard rejection but then it damages the brighter stars.

Realistically I probably shouldn't even bother starting to image this for another few months, do it when it is higher in the sky and all that. It is so big and bright though ;)

Astrobin High Res (http://www.astrobin.com/full/233900/0/)

[Placidus]

Very fine, Colin.

You can safely clip the dark point to about 9200 counts, removing a lot of milkiness without losing any data.

Nice work.

Automatic focus is bliss.

[Atmos]

I used the dark area in the bottom left corner as a black thinking that if that is black then maybe there is something in the rest of the rest of the image... Maybe it is just an under correction from the flats.

I am assuming that the dusty lanes running through the centre are meant to be the black?

I am so looking forward to getting the RoboFocus attached. Have it automatically refocus every hour as I sleep :-)

[strongmanmike]

That's a fine result Colin. I too think the milkyness in the lanes is indeed real but you could probably still up the contrast a little as Mike says.

Refocusing?...hey just stay up and drink beer coffee and whisky like I do, and do it yourself, aaah great fun! :drink: :lol:...then sleep in and get out of housework :P

Mike

[multiweb]

That looks very good Colin. :thumbsup: As Mike pointed out the lanes in the center are the right tone of grey. They're not that dark.

[Slawomir]

Nice result Colin, I will be looking forward to seeing the fruits of your experimentations with this object :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

This is the current colour scheme that I am looking for, it is a single 10m each in SII, Ha and OIII. Took this one about two months ago purely as a test.



I do think I flattened the image a bit too much in the curves, brightened the background considerably and dulled down the Keyhole area.

I'd really struggle staying up all night doing the focusing, I don't drink beer! Try to get up every hour or so to do the focusing but sometimes I do sleep in until morning! Mostly difficult as I need to leave for work at 6am :/



Thanks Marc, good to know I wasn't being too paranoid about black clipping :)



Sometimes I think I spend too much time experimenting :) My job this weekend is to dismantle my EQ6 Pro and regrease it, the PHD guide graph is getting some random 4 arcsec jumps that I am hoping I might be able to smooth out. Did some Googling last night and apparently some people get as high as 17 arcsec jumps!

[Atmos]

Tried to not go over the top with processing, although Mike will probably tell me there is worms in there :P Did two iterations of a low STD deconvolution in linear stage and a low STD low strength unsharp mask at the end. I am hoping that if I am able to run a deconvolution and unsharp mask without needing to use any mask or deringing, I may be okay... Only scrutiny will tell :P

As my first was literally just a histogram selection and curves I thought I'd do a bit more to see what's in the data. Considering that I have been having some tracking problems (reason for wanting to dismantle and regrease my EQ6) and imaging on 15-20 degree nights, I am quite happy with the level of detail. I know my tracking spikes are killing the achievable resolution so I hope to get that under control, or at least lessen it.

Hopefully have a stiffer guider arrive early next year, I have a strong feeling that I am suffering from differential flexure of ~1-2pix/hour in the guider. If I can get my PA down to ~20" on both axis I should be able to effective do 1 hour subs without excessive star streaking... I assume so anyway! QHY have quite recently released an OAG which will bolt onto the CFW (will end up much like a QSI) so I'll go down that path once they've done what seems like a single run. Who knows when they'll be released on a larger scale, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Still trying to vastly improve my processing skills so scrutiny is welcome. Full Res (http://www.astrobin.com/full/233900/B/) for all you pixel peepers :)

[strongmanmike]

....quite excellent Colin!

No worms anywhere that I could find :thumbsup:

If you are able to iron out all those little issues you mention, maaaate you are onto a pretty effective rig there :)

Mike

[multiweb]

+1 High-res is truly superb Colin. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Atmos]

No worms, that's good to know. Currently in the process of another process... Comparing the two... I may have gone a little over board and not at all respected the light :lol:



Thanks Marc. I am very happy with how the telescope is performing. Reasonably happy with the QHY9 (QHY needs to do update a couple of things on their ASCOM driver). Happy with the EQ6 Pro for what it costs, you do get what you pay for though :P

[Shiraz]

very nice result Colin. the resolution is exceptional which I guess means that the scope is working as it should. There are some minor star shape issues, but nothing that really detracts from the nebula or the overall effect. Looks like you have a very effective system.

[Atmos]

Thanks Ray :) A part of me wants to go and turf half of my subs as they're the less round of the lot. The star trailing is along the azimuth axis, ie, following the same direction as when I am polar aligning the azimuth. I assume this is differential flexure and not misalignment. T-Point tells me that I am usually ~30" off in PA which shouldn't be causing enough drift in 15 minutes when guiding. I do get some pretty large RA spikes though :/

[RickS]

The high res Ha on Astrobin looks very promising, Colin.

[Atmos]

Thanks Rick, hoping to finish this over the next two weeks with some OIII and SII. Couple of things to tighten up on my EQ6 tomorrow afternoon and I'll hopefully be able to start tomorrow night.

[Placidus]

Hi, Colin,

We think the new version is much better, and it was very good to start with.

Best,
M & T