M83 work in progress

[The_bluester]

I have spent the last few nights fiddling with setup and after working on stuff last night I had some imaging time to spare so, moon up or not I aimed at M83 and shot a few hours of 5 minute subs.

This is 200 minutes of 5 minute subs, any longer and the background brightness from the moon was too intrusive.

Celestron C925, no reducer, ASI294MC Pro camera, Orion Atlas Pro mount (AZEQ6 with black paint)

Shot using APT, integrated in APP and a bit of a polish in Photoshop CC. Long way to go yet but it was a good test and proved why I need in sequence auto focus to happen. The SCT changes focus quickly with temperature, and changes focus on a meridian flip (Which it did last night while I was asleep, I threw out the subs after as the focus shifted visibly.

Constructive criticism always welcome, just recall that I still pretty well consider myself a beginner and the moon was a real limiting factor, I have had to tweak data at the cost of detail not to end up with a mushy, bright background. I have plenty of other criticisms of it myself, such as the full res looks a bit over sharpened.


Astrobin version here



https://www.astrobin.com/full/400747/0/?nc=user

[Andy01]

Looking good Paul, round stars, good tracking etc.
Focus issues aside, it's probably a tad black clipped as well but certainly well on the way to a great result! :thumbsup:

[LewisM]

All good, 'cept it's not M84 ...that'd be M83 :lol: (I know you got it right in the text)

[The_bluester]

Whoops, typo now fixed.


Agreed on the black clipping, but with the moonlit sky it actually looks nicer that way. That would have been levels in PS that did that, a bit too aggressive on the black point.