Sculptor galaxy

[Greggles]

Sculptor galaxy taken with a 10" f5 dobsonian on a home made EQ platform. 200 8 second light frames stacked in sequator and processes in Photoshop.

[PKay]

Wow Greg, that scope certainly sucks in the photons!

Great capture.

[Greggles]

Thanks peter!

Yeah, I'm always surprised with what it picks up considering I have light pollution of port botany on one side and the city on the other.

Cheers.

Greg

[Zuts]

Hi,

Great result, especially impressive with a home made EQ mount. You should attach a photo of that as well.

Cheers
Paul

[Mickoid]

Gregory, a very impressive result from your set up. Was this guided by hand or have you also attached a motor to your home made EQ mount? I downloaded your image to my phone and stretched it a bit to find a lot of detail you have clipped with your processing. I reduced the exposure, played with the levels and increased the saturation to reveal some very good data amongst those 200 X 8 sec subs. Stars are a little eggy but at 1250mm of focal length I would expect it to very difficult to keep them round on a home made mount. Great effort on achieving this, keep up the good work! :thumbsup:

[Greggles]

Thanks every one,

The EQ platform is has a stepper motor attached. Although I'm still working to improve this. I actually had captured 400 frames but 50% were throw away. There's another thread in the diy section about my progress in upgrading from DC to stepper motor.

Oh and I also forgot to add that I have to use a 1.5x Barlow in order to get focus which doesn't help with the elongated stars.

Thanks Mickoid, more than happy to share the unprocessed image if youre interested to play around with it. I just admit my PP skills aren't the best and I tend to over process my images.

Cheers

Greg

[Greggles]

Thanks Paul,

Its and EQ platform so my dobsonian just sits on top of this.

Slowly slowly through the process of elimination I'm finding little thing to improve all the time. So many factors!

Photo attached