Not another M20 and M8 image!

[peeb61]

This image of M20 and M8 was taken by myself and Dave S on 3 May 2008, it is a 5 min exposure at 1600iso taken with a Canon 350D Unmod.
Afocal with a 102mm F/5 Skywatcher piggybacked on my trusty 10" LX200gps. (Autoguided with a DSI)

Brightness and contrast adjusted in Photoshop and cropped.

Enjoy
Paul

[dugnsuz]

Hi Paul,
That's a great image considering it's a single, high iso exposure done with an achromatic refractor and unmodded dslr AND minimal processing!!!!
Wow - great effort.
Doug

[leon]

Bloody hell great stuff for a one shot image, just imagine if you had ten of them to stack, nice work.

Leon

[iceman]

That's a great start, nicely done Paul. Excellent detail for a single exposure.

[AlexN]

shot a-focally whats more!

Brilliant!

[Garyh]

Very nice Paul, but I don`t know about minimal processing?
where`s the blue halos as there would be alot with the f/5 achro?
But a very nice result.
cheers

[peeb61]

Thanks to all of the nice comments, it makes sitting out in the cold worthwhile. One piece of equipment that I did forget on the capture list was my "You beaut" 2" Orion Deep Sky Filter.

The imaged was processed the very next day in Photoshop Elements, Open image, 'Enhance' and then 'Autolevels' and then slight adjustment in brightness and contrast and that's it! I was was more happy with the outcome as you can see.

The link below is another image of C/2007 W1 (Boattini) I posted, another image taken on the same night, again 5 minutes at 1600iso. But this image had noise removal applied.

The halo's on the f/5 achro only appear more pronounced when imaging when there are brighter stars in the field of view for longer times I have found. (Or did they sell me an ED scope and put the wrong stickers on it?)

On this image (M20 and M8) they are visible if you zoom in on the actual image.

I am more than happy to email the unprocessed straight out of the camera image out for anyone to play around with.

Paul

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment_browse.php?a=42241

[Garyh]

Ah...thats why...the deepsky filter would cut most of that CA out.
I use to have a 100mm f/5 achro and it gave me big blue haloes around any bright star with my 300D. All I needed is one of these filters or a anti violet and I would have been right!
But I didn`t know any better back then..
Look forwards to more of your work!
cheers Gary

[RB]

Paul what splendid result for a single shot.
Well done.

How did you set it up for afocal?

[peeb61]

Hi Andrew,
I did say AFocal didn't I? Dah and double dah! I appear to have AFocal on the brain......What I meant to say is Prime focus :screwy:

I captured the image at prime focus eg Camera...T-Adapter...filter...then scope.... :P

My apologies and thanks for pointing that out.

Paul