Eagle from Glebe

[Zuts]

Hi Guys

After initial success with Focusmax and Robofocus, I cant get it to work anymore :mad2:, so back to manual focus until i get it sorted out.

Very nice night last night, but very cold in Sydney. I felt quite stupid all alone in the Park at 3am, but there you go :)

Eagle nebula

6 by 600 sec subs, darks plus flats, UV/IR block
TV85, TV 0.8 reducer on EQ6, self guided with SBIG 2000 XCM
Levels and Curves PS2, Sum combine in Maxim
Reduced to 1200 pixels, 30 % compression, also included a crop of the central region, roughly VGA size.

I tried 10 minute subs this time, usually only go for 5.

Thanks for looking, any comments appreciated.

Paul

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Zuts,

Great images! I was looking at this Neb in my binos the other night.

I think if you out some clothes on under the trenchcoat when you are in the Park at 3am, then there is less risk of feeling stupid, or getting hauled away in a paddy wagon for being a deviate. :lol:

[jase]

Good work Paul. Nothing like an image to show for your efforts in the cold early hours of the morning. Nasty looking gradient you've got, but nothing a bit of processing cant fix. 60min of data yields a pleasing result. Thought you may try blend it with some Ha. Stars look a little bloated. You may want to try also taking some shorter subs say 3 or 5min in duration to solely manage star colours, then combine them in PS using the screen blend mode (and mask if desired).

Re: Robofocus...sounds like its lost its absolute positioning. This is one of the pains with Robofocus/FocusMax. Trying racking the focuser all the way out manually, then in the RFCP set the position to 1. FocusMax should then pickup the vcurve map again. Check your FM logs.

[Zuts]

Thanks Screwdriverone.

The cops have actually checked me out a number of times. I setup on a concrete cricket pitch and park the car next to it for safety. Glebe police have now lost interest in me but other patrols occasionally stop by.

They never minded about the car. The rangers are a different mater. They came around the other night at 2am and asked me to move it and told me next time they would give me a ticket. So now i have to park somewhere else, lug all my gear and dont feel as safe anymore :mad2:



Thanks Jase. I am thinking of investing in Noel Carbonis tools, they sound very good, especially at removing gradients.

I am not sure if some of the star bloat is due to my manual focus. I sorted out robofocus issue. I used a different extender and when doing V-curves there was not enough in-focus past good focus for the v-curve to run. I used a shorter extension last night and got some good v-curves and am back to focusing in under 40 seconds :)

[iceman]

Very nice indeed, one of your best so far?

[Zuts]

Thanks Mike,

I think my best was my Eta carinae as it had so much red, This one, well I tried to focus but wasn't sure. Now that my robofocus is working again, I cant wait.

I have learnt one thing, that is the more data the better. I really should go for two or three hours with an OSC but after an hour I get impatient...

Compared to my DSLR I am amazed. The other night I took a 30 minute exposure of some stars from my treed out backyard and it wasnt washed out with LP. With the SBIG I can go up to at least 30 minutes without anything but a UV/IR cut. With the DSLR, 5 to 8 minutes with a UHC filter was the most I could manage with the LP.

Of course my mount is not up to 30 minute exposures, but I reckon I could go at least 20 minutes and may try soon.

Cheers Paul