Lagoon nebula-Attempt 3

[bloodhound31]

Did this one last night.

10 x 30 second light frames at ISO 1600, 10 x darks removed, stacked and processed in deep sky stacker.

Celestron Nexstar 11, equatorial wedge alignment, Canon 400D, prime focus on a waxing gibbous moonlit night. Also used one of those ambient light filters on the camera adaptor. The resulting shot was a little darker, but way more detailed.

http://www.aussiepeople.com.au/asignobservatory/Astrophotography.aspx

Removing the darks seems to have made all the difference.

Conversley, I opend the shutter on the same target and just let the telescope go with it's own tracking for fifteen minutes. (Fell asleep) Have a go at what it did! (Second image) I have no idea how to refine this tracking. I'm thinking when I get the ED80 on top, I will have to guide manually.

Baz.:D

[Dr Nick]

Nice pics, I think the darker one has a bit more data that can be brought out to make it a little better.
As for the other one, manual guiding might be for you... but the camera obviously has the power for good images of that what you got! ;)

Try some of these techniques (http://www.nicksastronomy.com/proccess.php) to brighten the dim one if you have photoshop!
It could turn out much better than you think!

[Doug]

G'day Baz, you're doing well. Have you Pec trained your nexstar mount?
No matter how well balanced your ota, if you have uncorrected
pE you'll get trailing over an extended exposure time. Autoguiding will mostly fix it, but pec training is valuable too. Your colour balance is biased to the green; not familiar with the program you are using, however it should have some sort of rgb presets for when you do the raw convert to colour. this is the best time and place to get your white balance correct.
keep up the good work,
Doug

[5ash]

Hi Baz
i have anlx90 on a homemade wedge and have found one star alignment a very succesful way of achieving alignment , i can take pics for at least two minutes and get 30% with pinpoint stars.Is there any such alignment routine available on celestron scopes. Its so easy to achieve alignment as the only star you have to worry about is sigma octanis which the telescope finds for you.
regards philip

[bloodhound31]

Thanks guys.

Yes I did a PEC train tonight as a practice run in the bright moonlight.

I have finally completed a successful drift alignment in full. Now I uunderstand it finally.

Come new moon, I will give it another crack.

I will also try the 15 minute shot again, just to see the difference now with a proper drift alignment.

Stay tuned....

Baz.