Late NGC 253

[RobF]

Late in the season, but my first success with autoguiding - so exciting for me. Also first time with calibration against darks and flats, using my newly constructed light saber, err box. Also thankful to have seen the sky cloudless for first time in weeks. Bit of gusty wind Sat night here, but didn't seem to upset anything.

7x300sec + 7x180sec stacked in DSS

Some tweaking and sharpening in PS (again, just starting out here, but happy with how it brought this one out).

[bloodhound31]

Nice. You almost feel as if you could fall into it.

Baz.

[RobF]

Many many thanks to A.S.I.G.N. and all the trouble you went to with your lightbox instructions Barry. Hunted around a bit and couldn't find anything that suited my purposes and skills better! :hi::thumbsup:

http://www.asignobservatory.com/diy_do_it_yourself/light_box.aspx

[strongmanmike]

Nice job Rob! 253 is a superb galaxy huh?

I remember the first time I had autoguiding working, after years of manual eye guiding, man! :scared: it was just incredible to watch. I still get a smile on my face and love just watching the guide window, when my guide star plot wonders around the guide star cetroid with average errors as low as 0.1 pix or just 0.25 arc sec:eyepop:

Mike

[atalas]

Great effort Rob.

[Inmykombi]

Such nice colour and detail Rob.

253 is truely a beautiful Galaxy.

Geoffro.

[AlexN]

Well done mate! Now you understand why I was smiling so much up at cambroon last month! Guiding really does make life a better place!! :)

Cant wait to see more from you and your rig! :)
Alex.

[RobF]

Thanks Alex.
I reckon we're both set for some serious photon pillaging now! Trouble with Ron's is you just want a week up there! So much to learn from other people, but the sky is just so damned dark - where do you start!! :eyepop:
Forecast still looking nasty for Sat too dammit....

[Octane]

Rob,

With autoguiding up your sleeve, and a light box to boot, there'll be no stopping you now.

Well done.

Regards,
Humayun

[RobF]

I've had another go at processing this one, this time using IRIS with Bias frames, then similar stretching, balancing and a smidge of sharpening in photoshop. Only used 6 of the 5mins lights - one was a bit oblong on 2nd look, probably due to gusts on the night.

Feels a bit more natural. Even though a lot brighter the diffraction spikes don't seem to be anywhere near as washed out.

Used a hodge-podge of the IRIS tuts at:
http://www.saratogaskies.com/articles/cookbook/index.html#IRIS_Setup
http://astro.ai-software.com/articles/dslr_iris/dslr_iris.html