Long time between drinks

[DavidTrap]

Last year was a bit of a write off with family stuff and the weather hasn't helped much since.

Still very much in the learning phase with my QHY600M. Processing skills are very, very rusty.

Imaged M42 at Leyburn over the weekend - needed something big and bright to image in the time remaining between clouds clearing and astronomical twilight arriving. 10 x 120sec subs for each of LRGB filters. AP130 with QuadTCC riding on a Mach1.

Core is blown out completely. Need to blend in some 30 second images - fingers crossed we can get them sometime over summer.

Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Link to Astrobin here (https://astrob.in/cix3zc/0/)

[gregbradley]

A good step back into the game.

Looks good with excellent colour.

Greg

[strongmanmike]

Lovely colours and a nice clean result Dave, with a magnificent rig, you must be busting to take it for a real run?!

Edit: Just had a look at the full res version on a monitor (not just my phone) and there is some serious distortion (Coma?) of the periphery stars, what is causing this? TCC Spacing..?

Mike

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Gents,

Mike - could be spacing or tilt. I do have a tilt adjuster to fiddle with, but not being a permanent setup does hamper that significantly. Need to do more experimentation at home on moonful nights.

[gregbradley]

I have a very similar setup with an AP130GT and TCC.
I got several of the AP 1mm spacer rings.
I found the stated spacing on the AP website to be considerably off
on my QHY600m. I can measure mine if you like.
Recommended was something like 102.4mm.
My best results were at something like 119mm!
I tried it twice.
I get mostly good stars in the corners.
These small pixelled cameras are known by AP to cause issues that the 9micron CCDs did not.

Greg

[DavidTrap]

If you can measure yours please Greg - might save some time. 17mm is a fairly thick spacer…

[alan meehan]

Nice shot David colour looks great doin better than most of us

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Alan - point taken…

DT