Full Moon NGC 253 (recolour balanced)

[Atmos]

As I currently only had a OSC camera I've been trying to think of what kind of imaging I wanted to do over the full moon period from my suburban back yard and decided this would be the perfect time to try imaging a galaxy :lol:

NGC 253 is large enough and bright enough that I don't think the moon matters too much, I'd say my biggest killer at the moment is shooting with a F/10 (F/4 would make SNR easier) at 0.4"/pixel :lol:

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how the 3.2 hours has come up so far. Ended up with a FWHM of 2" which isn't fantastic by any means but it's the best I've managed with this setup so far. Given how bright the background is even at F/10 I am thinking about dropping my exposure time from 5 min to 2 min, could yield sharper results and I'm still 10-15x read noise.

For pixel peepers (https://www.astrobin.com/full/idw6ol/B/)

This is about as good as it's going to get until I add another 20 hours of exposure.

[Slawomir]

That's a great image Colin - the scope certainly speeds up cooking astro images :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

Thanks Suavi. Imaging with something faster than F/10 would certainly quicken things up a bit more. 0.4”/pixel is a bit overkill for my typical seeing which isn’t THAT great.

[codemonkey]

That sounds like the perfect circumstances to try high resolution galaxy imaging, Colin ;-)

That's come out very well; nice resolution. How did you decide on the colour?

[Atmos]

Thanks Lee :)
I’ve processed this a number of times and used PCC with Average Spiral galaxy and it’s always come out the same so I assume it’s right. It has a bit more orange and less blue than some others on the Internet though so I might try it as a G2V at some stage.

[codemonkey]

Pretty sure G2V comes out more red than average spiral. Rather than derail your thread, I'm gonna make a separate topic to discuss this further...

[strongmanmike]

Great idea under a Full Moon Col :eyepop: ..bloody Moon! :mad2:...lucky we only have one! :eyepop: :lol:...very nice result regardless :thumbsup:

Mike

[Atmos]

I did a quick test with G2V and you're right, it's still not even close. I've redone it from scratch and selected the galaxy and ran ColorCalibration but without star detection so it uses the entire Preview as the white balance. I'm much happier with the result.



Gotta do something when the moon is out! I should probably just stick to globular clusters though :lol:

[codemonkey]

Y'know, I kinda preferred the original, Colin :rundog: ... I know I called out the colour but I genuinely wasn't meaning to imply it was bad, just different

[Atmos]

I don't mind the original but I do prefer the current one personally. I used the Chart 32 (http://www.chart32.de/images/objects/galaxies/NGC253/NGC253-80P.jpg) as a benchmark for colour matching and although mine has a lot more green noise it's pretty close.

[ChrisV]

Really nice Colin. And to think they discontinued this camera?

[Atmos]

Thanks Chris.
I believe ZWO had always planned on this camera being a limited edition but QHY still make the QHY367C.

[RobF]

Nice work Colin. Glad you managed to re-balance the egg-yolk look out.
That's an impressive image.

[Paul Haese]

This is good for full moon imaging and one shot colour Colin. The colour is pleasing and detail is pretty good too.

[gregbradley]

That turned out very well. FWHM of 2 arc seconds in my experience is somewhat rare.

Greg.

[Atmos]

Thanks Rob and all.
I’ve definitely learned that I’m better off doing a manual colour balance instead of PPC. I do find PPC does okay with globular clusters though but they are intrinsically redder too.



I’m pretty happy with it too Paul, I’m thinking brighter objects might be better though. Another boring M42 may be coming when the skies clear again!



Only had a couple of nights with it so far so I am curious to see how the FWHM goes under different conditions.