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View Full Version here: : M8 Lagoon Nebula 26-05-08


bluescope
28-05-2008, 03:23 AM
Hi All

Once again the weather outlook here is gloomy for astronomers 'till probably next Tuesday so with a break in the cloud cover last night I got out in my observatory and did some imaging. There was still some high level cloud occasionally but mostly clear .... very heavy dew though.

Stars are a bit eggy ( sorry ... couldn't get a good calibration) but the dark dust clouds came through quite well IMO.

I used my new Shoestring FCUSB coupled to my SW electric focuser which made focusing more precise.

I tried controlling the EQ6 with Starry Night Pro5 .... it worked thanks to EQMOD ASCOM drivers but I obviously need to align within the program somehow ( more reading ) because it came close to finding objects but not quite so I disconnected the link and used the EQ6 hand controller to do my imaging.

Total 45mins 9x300sec @ -14c with CCDOPS self guided
Stacked RGB and DDP files of each frame in DSS and converted to tiff
I used 3x drizzle mosaic mode in DSS and it gave me a whopping 5002x4123@100dpi image to crop from _ see attached uncropped/post GXT version
Cropped to 3x2 and GradientXTerminator in PS5.5

SkyWatcher 254mm F4.7 Newt
EQ6 Pro
SBIG ST2000XCM
Baader MPCC
Baader UV/IR
IDAS LPS2

:thumbsup:

iceman
28-05-2008, 06:52 AM
Nice result Steve, nice colour. Shame about the eggy stars but as long as you're learning each time out!

bluescope
28-05-2008, 01:50 PM
Thanks Mike, always learning !

:thumbsup: