Just another M8, hanging out with his M8s

[jahnpahwa]

After belt modding my mount I'm getting ready to put some time into something! But last night gave it an hour (6 x 5mins Oiii and Ha) on the Lagoon. Spent a good chunk of the hour under 0.7 arcsec total RMS, and i am stoked. It was (finally!) as simple as opening phd2, loop, autoselect star, start. It seems I've got a good calibration on now and no longer an amt of backlash that needs any compensation.



I am, however, seeing that i need to focus individually per filter. The Oiii here was sharp, the Ha less so. Thats ok though! One thing at a time.

[xelasnave]

That is an excellent image and I am surprised you got away with less attention to focusing than you really need..I think you were lucky because your focus looks spot on...
I have been meaning to order a belt mod but so many things to do and when zi get a break I just like to play processing.
You may do this but look at each sub critically..if a star is a little off drop it ..I have had many problems leaving me with poor subs and going thru it is easy to notice the bad ones but I started noticing ones that you miss really..so I cut anything a little off..my last ( very last) lagoon showed just so much improvement because I was tuff and dropped anything not near perfect...however I plan yet another go and cut out even more and see how that goes.
Yes pay attention to focus between filter change..
But you are really doing very well.
Alex

[Startrek]

A really good image of M8 with limited data , definitely not over saturated
Plenty of detail there although the core could be a touch brighter
Nice colours too
Looking at your PHD2 snap shot I noticed your guide star saturated ( Red SAT ) with a SNR of 138 . I’m surprised the guiding was so tight with a saturated star
My auto select guide stars normally have a SNR of 20 to 35
Do you manually select your guide star or use Auto select Star in Tools , I suspect you manually select as PHD2 wouldn’t select a saturated star
What scope for this image ??

[jahnpahwa]

Thanks Alex and Martin :)


I think my brain is finally tuned to be conservative with astro now, and i have a real preference for tackling/changing one thing at a time. To be honest I've been overwhelmed a few times already, with so many balls in the air, struggling to troubleshoot when many things are changing. Ive been kind of close to throwing the whole lot of gear off a cliff more than once! So yes, i reckon the next thing I'll do is focussing per filter. Until now I've been running my APT plans vertically, switching filters each sub. The rationale was that if the weather changed, I'd still have a complete image to process. I think now I'm getting a keener eye for detail and want to chip away at taking my time with each image and take time to get things right.


Martin, I've only just learned that the star profile tool exists in Phd2! I initially really just learned barely enough to get it barely functioning. That star was indeed an autoselect, it may gave been the only one visible... my guide scope isnt aligned with my main scope and I've spent the past week getting to grips with the importance of focus and brightness when guiding. Yes, I'm surprised at that guiding result too, given the flat top of the star profile. I guess it had steep transition and so edge definition was decent?


Anyway, thanks, its another image that I'm not really super impressed with, but i am.so glad to have the guiding rolling!

[Kuz]

Nice work JP I think this a pretty, good image of M8