Sombrero galaxy

[Somnium]

each image i post i feel like there is an improvement but i am still way off where i want to be. i would love my stars to be a lot sharper but that just may be the limit of my seeing conditions. anyway thanks for looking

[Atmos]

Some of them look a bit more bloated than what I would have thought, pretty bad seeing? At least they're round and not elongated :thumbsup:!
In saying that, hard to judge/compare at 200 kb ;)

Have you stretched out the exposure times a bit more? Last you mentioned you'd dropped them considerably due to mount issues.

[Somnium]

these were 5 min subs. the seeing is terrible and the tracking is no good either ... tonight i got about 10 mins of decent seeing then it all went to crap

[Somnium]

higher res available on facebook https://www.facebook.com/618688161540178/photos/a.734031263339200.1073741833.618688 161540178/1005998219475835/?type=3&theater

[Atmos]

There is a number of fainter galaxies in the background which is a good sign :) Seeing aside, it looks like the new telescope is performing brilliantly!

[vlazg]

Hi Aidan
Your tracking is looking better, great shot, but it looks like you should have cropped it on the right hand side more , it looks like there are some black bars after registration which will affect processing

[Somnium]

Thanks for that, i didn't notice that. i will crop it out.



the issue is bigger than seeing and i am struggling to identify and resolve it. but i have had an unprecedented string of clear skies on a new moon and i am going to take advantage of it for now and troubleshoot the tracking issues during the fuller moon.

[raymo]

You say the tracking is no good, well I've blown my screen up to 400%,
checked about 25 stars, large, medium, and small, and all are perfect
circles, unless my eyes are up the creek.
raymo

[Somnium]

the stars are now rounds but seriously bloated. half the issue is seeing but the other half is the mount bouncing around trying to correct for tracking errors. my FWHM is around 8 on my subs which is just horrible.

[rustigsmed]

nice one aidan,

not much you can do about the seeing conditions was it fairly windy?
stars are round so that is another step closer.

cheers

[Somnium]

i dont know what the wind was doing, i have no way of determining that accurately from Sydney. the stars are very bloated, i dont think that is all seeing, unless it really is that bad ...

[RickS]

The detail in the galaxy is pretty reasonable, Aidan. When you say your FWHM is 8 do you mean pixels or arcsec? If it is pixels, then what's your image scale?

Cheers,
Rick.

[Somnium]

Thanks Rick, it is "participation ribbon" quality :) haha

the FWHM is in pixels with an image scale of .45 arc seconds per pixel so 3.6 arc seconds

[RickS]

I'd rate it a bit higher than that :thumbsup:



Ok, so that's not too terrible and quite possibly consistent with a night of below average seeing (or even average seeing some places!)

You're going to need really great seeing to take full advantage of that image scale.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Somnium]

Last night I had 1 image with a fwhm of 2.2 arc seconds. Maybe I just need to take colour subs on average seeing nights and get the Lum data on fantastic seeing nights. Though they will be rare. I have no idea how some people get the shots that they do then. Maybe I need to move the obs to a place with much better seeing to get those really pinpoint stars, or invest in AO (not that it will provide that much of an advantage)

[RickS]

I think you'll find that a lot of people, including me, use decon and other techniques, e.g. MorphologicalTransformation in PI, to shrink the stars in their images.

[Somnium]

I used decon on this one and it helped a bit but still not great obviously. I don't have Pi , are there ps tools that can help?

[5ash]

You could try Noel carboni's "astronomy tools " action set for Photoshop . ~$20 when I bought them. One of the actions is reduce star size.
Philip

[RobF]

How are you focusing currently? Any chance it was just a smidge off?
Pretty smashing image regardless, especially as you're "feeling out" what the new rig is capable of.

[Somnium]

I think the focus is pretty good, I am using focusmax but I don't always trust the results. It probably is just seeing and a bit of a tracking issue.