NGC 6334 Cats Paw Nebula and NGC253

[AstroTom]

Hi All,

I asked a while back about imaging the Cats Paw Nebula and this last Saturday I was finally able to get out and image. I have attached the result below. The image is composed of:

3 hours of 6 minute subs stacked with darks, flats and bias frames. The equipment used was:

ED120 Refractor
AZEQ6 mount
Synguider
Orion ST80 Guidescope
Canon 600D Modded

In addition to the Cats Paw I also imaged the Sculpture galaxy. The image attached is 1 hour of 6 minute exposures.

Anyway happy for feedback.

Regards,

Tom

[thegableguy]

Nice work! Particularly impressed with the Sculptor - might make that my next target when the moon goes away in a few weeks. What time of night did you take that one?

Forgive the possibly stupid question, but I'm curious as to why there are diffraction spikes when shooting with a refractor...?

[blink138]

nice 253!
pat

[Atmos]

They're really nice shots, especially with a DSLR and sub 5" refractor :)
It looks like some detail may have been lost in NGC 253 with the noise reduction but very nice all the same :)

[gaseous]

Very nice! Was this at Wyaralong?

[Mosc_007]

Very good indeed. Very imporessed. So clean with exceptional detail.

[Adriano]

Both images are nice.

[AstroTom]

Hi All,

Thanks for the feedback and comments. To answer some of your questions, I have the following responses.

1) for the star spikes, I use a plugin on photoshop called Star Spikes Pro. I only subtly apply this as it can sometimes make your stars look a bit fake. I quite like the diffraction spikes in the stars.

2) Yes these were shot at Wyaralong Dam with the Astro Anarchy crew.

Regards,

Tom