A fistful of galaxies

[The_bluester]

I was working on a target a couple of nights back which is getting a bit late in the year for, so I had a couple of hours to kill between it getting lower than I want to image at and moonrise. A quick hunt in Stellarium for a target netted some coordinates to put into SGP so I took a breath and plugged it in trusting that EQMOD would keep the mount from doing anything stupid if I got it wrong.

Anyway, 30 subs later, NGC1365 and friends. I am hoping to gather another 60 or 70 subs tomorrow and Friday nights which are about it for clear weather in the forecast, so I can drizzle without introducing as much noise. Integrated in Astro Pixel Processor and a tweak in Photoshop CC 2019. Shot in one unattended session, processed in half an hour before I left for work!

[Sunfish]

Great collection of galaxies. Looking very bright and clear.

[xelasnave]

I really like it Paul...and you make it sound painless. A great effort.
Alex

[ChrisV]

Awesome, watch out Clint Eastwood ...

[The_bluester]

This one WAS painless, I literally plugged in some co-ords and requested 30 subs and got up in the morning to find out if I had images or wreckage in place of equipment.

Mind you I have three more goes at the same data and come up with a worse result every time! I should leave it along until I get a lot more subs. Drizzle processing introduces a very strange set of artifacts which are not very obvious in that version of the image but are still there.

[paul71]

Great capture Paul, lots of galaxies to look at
Was this taken with your Zwo294mc?
Cheers.

[The_bluester]

Yes. I meant to put that in the first post. ASI294 MC Pro and the Evostar 72 with the 0.85 reducer/corrector and a UV-IR cut filter. 5 minute subs.

[casstony]

Looks great Paul. Are you going to give the big scope a run on that barred spiral?

[The_bluester]

I reckon so yeah, it should frame it really nicely.


Before then I need to arrange a UV-IR filter for it to see if the camera responds to it anything like as well on the SCT as it does on the ED72. There are two options I can see, one is a filter I have seen overseas that would cost about $200 and is SCT thread, the other is if I can find one with a good length of thread on the female side. The ZWO one I have does not have very much female thread available and hanging the OAG and imaging camera off it was a bit scary!

[casstony]

Could you fit a filter holder, slide or wheel into the image train so you can change filters?
https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/index.php/cat/c120_Filter-Wheels-and-Filterslider.html

[The_bluester]

I reckon some of those would do the job and allow me to fit a filter easily enough but the cost by the time I buy one and a 2" filter is getting to be lineball with the SCT thread filter.

[The_bluester]

The weather was kind to me last night so I gathered data while i could, this version is significantly less noisy for the same processing steps. More data again tonight all going well, this is 68 subs, it would be nice to top 100 subs to see how the noise improvement flatten out. Where I am shooting from there is a brief drought of interesting targets at this image scale so I might as well keep plugging away at getting more data on it for now.


https://www.astrobin.com/full/a5nwrg/0/

[casstony]

Lots of detail around the barred spiral on your astrobin version - well done.

[The_bluester]

I am pretty happy with it at this stage, I am really only pressing on to see how the noise profile improves with another 40 or so subs. The only thing that is a little limiting at this point is my original framing includes a reflection of light from a bright star in the corner, I am looking the other way for now!

[Zubenel]

The extra data has made a real difference. Love it :thumbsup::)

[The_bluester]

Actually this one is out of sync, the final version is here. I have tried to first soften and then delete the watermark because it is a bit intrusive, but no joy.


https://www.astrobin.com/full/yypxc4/B/ (https://www.astrobin.com/yypxc4/B/?nc=user)

[Ant0nio]

The final version is awesome Paul, the ED72 seems to be a very capable widefield instrument, Well done.
Tony

[The_bluester]

I have been quite surprised at how well it performs for a scope that is only (very) arguably apocromatic.

I am now moving on to try another trick with it by way of shooting and processing to see if I can sharpen the blue focus up, by shooting multiple runs with different focus offsets and picking out the best run for each colour channel in the debayered images and processing those as if they were shot with a mono cam and filters. More or less shooting individually focused RGB using an OSC camera. I will have to try this field of view again next year shot that way (If it works well enough to make it worth the extra shooting and processing time)