Going for a stroll around Sagittarius…

[Dave882]

With the Sydney forecast showing nothing but rain, ClearOutside provided a glimmer of hope telling me I had 3hrs of decent sky on Sunday before it all went bad. I still had the Hyperstar hooked up to the c14 from capturing C-2017 K2 & M10 so decided to have a crack at some widefield fun! A filter was a must due to the moon coming up so picked the IDAS NBZ.

Starting with 2.5hrs on m8 (few cloudy breaks in between) , the clouds arrived in force, but half an hour later it was clear again so I nudged across to NGC6559 & IC1274/5. 2hrs later it was some patchy cloud but being an optimist I kept going and pushed over to m20. I left it running while I went to bed and was pleased to end up by the end of the night approx 5.5hrs split over the 3 targets.

I decided to try and put them together as a mosaic to detail the complex connectivity of all these objects. As this was an afterthought (never thought I’d get more than 1 target that night) I began to realise this really needed 4 panels- but what the heck- gotta make make the most of what we got! Who said pictures have got to be rectangular?!?

APP did the grunt work but needed some extra processing in PS/LR to get control of the bright core in m8 and the thick star field. I think I got the Hyperstar spacing much better this time but still one corner is out of whack and it shows in a few places.

To do this one any justice...heres the bigger version (https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArpSiLT3VkGHiPJ_etVFEN_u2b2aog?e= cGABkY)

C14 HYPERSTAR
Eq8 Pro
asi2600mc Pro
Orion 50mm guide scope & asi290mm
IDAS NBZ filter
322 x 60sec subs split over the 3 panels
Shot B6/7 under lots of moonlight
ASIAIR PRO APP PS LR
Thanks for coming for a look!

[PKay]

Nice work David :thumbsup:

It's great when a plan comes together.
Maybe add the missing bits when it clears up...next year :P

[Addos]

Great shot mate, good gradient control!

[Startrek]

Dave,
Excellent image and processing
Well done !
These 2600 series cameras are incredible
Can’t wait for the 3600 to come out ?
Did you use Gain 0 or Gain 100 ?
Also that LP filter worked a treat
Cheers
Martin

[Dave882]

Thanks Peter- not sure there was much of a plan going into this other than taking advantage of some rare clear sky :P, but yes I was pleasantly surprised by the result actually. Yes I’ll definitely fill in the gaps later on…I actually had most of them filled but some of the data was seriously compromised by passing cloud so just wasn’t worth adding it.

[ChrisD]

Nice result. You definitely managed the gradients well. I'm working on a mosaic at the moment, I hope it comes out as good as yours!

Chris

[Dave882]

Thanks mate- I appreciate that, quite tricky actually. Especially with the rising moon there were a lot of gradients between the panels and with the meridian flip too. A bit of trial and error in APP settings and about a 200ish points on the gradient removal tool later!

[Dave882]

Thanks Martin really appreciate your comments! Yes I’m a big fan of the 2600…what’s this tho about a 3600?!? Haven’t they drained out bank accounts enough already!!!
I actually used 100gain for this one (broke my own rule) which is why the stars are a bit blown out but I was mindful of the approaching weather so was doing my best to speed things up while using a dual nb filter. I think the NBZ goes ok with Hyperstar though id loooove to try the antila 5nm pre shifted filter to see how that goes at f1.9!

[Dave882]

Cheers Chris. I think APP does really quite well with complex gradients, although it’s still a fair bit of work with the tool. I had to go back and redo the integration a couple times just tweaking the blending settings for the mosaic too. What software are you using for your project?

[Addos]

200 pts? great googly moogly, admire the commitment!

[graham.hobart]

thats lovely and sharp-nice work amigo
:)

[Dave882]

Thank you kindly Graham

[ahmed_haider]

Well done! this deserves a salute! And such commitment to be imaging in sydney in these la nina times :)
Thank you for sharing this with us

[ChrisD]

I'm using pixinsight. Mosaic creation was quite a learning curve, a multistep process, but the results were reasonable.

Chris

[Dave882]

Thanks Ahmed- been a really difficult 9months for those of us on the east coast so just grabbing whatever skytime we can get!! Unfortunately that means imaging on less-than-perfect nights is all :)