My M104

[rat156]

Hi All,

Inspired by Peter Ward's superb image.

Here's what I got last night.

Meade 10"RCX at prime focus (f/8), SBig ST-10XME, AO8.

LRGB image (225 minutes Luminance, 30 each for the RGB).

Processed the living hell out of it trying to get some detail in the galactic ring, but not as much as Peter's, the data wasn't that good.

Share and enjoy!

Cheers
Stuart

[phobos]

beautiful capture Stuart. btw is that your Alfa in your avatar pic? I used to have a 105 GTV and am seriously thinking about another....

[strongmanmike]

Mate that's a super effort :thumbsup:

The framing is a bit weird though..I guess to get a suitable guide star?
Yeh, not as good as Peters electron microscope result, sure, but the level of detail in your dust lane is still quite good, you probably just need better seeing both within the scope and in the overhead atmosphere to get any better than this? It looks clipped to me though ie sky is too dark and galaxy halo cuts in too abruptly...although at least you can't see processing induced gradient steps in "your" halo :whistle:

Nice job

Mike

[rat156]

Yep one of four in the driveway, it's even me driving it.

Look what I did to it at Phillip Island last year...

[rat156]

Yes Mike, I processed the living hell out of it, but tried hard to keep some of the nasties out. The seeing wasn't that great last night, but I'm happy with the detail I managed to exude from the data.

Calibrate your monitor fella (or just get a Mac), I've found that many of my pics look completely different on PC's rather than my Mac, apparently it's a monitor gamma setting, but I do colour critical work for a magazine on this one, so I'm confident the background is not clipped (too much!).

Cheers
Stuart

[jjjnettie]

Beautiful work Stuart.

[Alchemy]

any shot that shows the inner detail is doing well. :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Nice details in the dust lanes. Cool! :thumbsup:

[telecasterguru]

Very well done. Great tracking for such a long exposure.

[Paul Haese]

Nice image Stuart, so much detail in the dust lane.

[RobF]

Great work. Thanks for showing...

[jase]

A fine image Stuart. Well done.

[Peter Ward]

Just some general observations The stars look asymmetric to me, suggesting the optics needed colimination.

In so far as my effort goes, don't forget a 10" scope has to expose for 2x as long to get the same flux as a 14" plus most SCT's run at around a 80% strehl, hence the airy disks are going to be down around 15-18% compared to a top shelf APO or RC.

That said....some nice detail in the lanes. Good effort.

[strongmanmike]

Actually my monitor is pretty good....... :bashcomp: :whistle:

The clipping was pretty low level but it did look to me as though the halo cut off just a bit too abruptly..?

Mike

[peeb61]

Beautiful image Stuart,
Just nice...Great tracking, nice detail.

Mate you have nailed it!

It doesn't take much in the way of equipment to enjoy what you are doing and you end up with same results.

Keep them coming.
Paul

[gregbradley]

Another super shot Stuart.

It also would look nice as a cropped image and rotated so its level as well.

Greg.