First Light with QHY9

[ejcruz]

My first attempt with the new camera had a go at the M8 (Lagoon) neblua, capture details:
Camera: QHY9 as main and QHY5 as guide
Scope: WO FLT-110 Triplet f/7
Filter: Ha 7nm
Mount: HEQ5 Pro
Subs: 14x15min
http://ejcruz.smugmug.com/photos/532634301_3TBrf-X2.jpg

Still learning all about mono CCD and the in's and out's of the QHY9.

Comments welcome.

Cheers
Eddie

[DavidU]

Thats a GREAT shot !

[seeker372011]

Eddie

congratulations on the new camera

those tight stars-brilliant!

Narayan

[Hagar]

Congrats on the new camera Eddie. Love the image. Detail, detail, detail. This will make a wonderful lum and blended red channel for a LRGB image.
Well done.

[dpastern]

+1. Stupid question, is that an expensive CCD imager?

Dave

[peter_4059]

Very nice Eddie. Looking forward to seeing some colour added.

[ejcruz]

Now that you have mentioned it, I can't remember what I did!


Just waiting for the clouds to move.


Got it from Gama, here's the link:
http://web.aanet.com.au/gama/index.html


As I said above, just waiting for the clouds to move and maybe the moon when I'm ready to shoot Oiii.

Thanks everyone, as this is just first light lots more to learn about this camera.

Cheers
Eddie

[dpastern]

Thanks for the link Eddie - price looks not too bad. I don't know much about CCD imagers yet, so will need to read up more and compare to see how it stacks against the competitors. It'd be a long term purchase anyways, not in the next X amount of months, especially if my current job goes South.

Dave

[Rhino1980]

Stunning!

[rat156]

Looks great, but I think you've clipped the black point in the image. Adjust it to about 90%K in PS, that usually give a nice result. Also might have just pushed the data a little bit too far and have lost some contrast in the middle of the lagoon in favour of the edges, stars might be saturated as well (they all look very white).

Do you have "The Zone system" book from Wodaski? There are some great processing tips in that.

Other than those minor processing things, the image is tops, nice pinpoint stars, smooth nebulosity.

Cheers
Stuart

[ejcruz]

When I did my research on 8300 chip QHY was maybe still is the best priced.

Thank you, I've reprocessed feel it's much better.

Thanks Stuart very good points, unfortunately I don't have Wodaski book must look into that. I've reprocessed as suggested, I really must learn more about PS, here is the reprocessed image.
http://ejcruz.smugmug.com/photos/532742725_JhmcD-X3.jpg

Cheers
Eddie

[AlexN]

G'day Eddie, I've already voiced my opinions over at QHYCCD forums, however, I'll say it here too.. Lovely data! awesome tight stars and detail abounds!

Alex.

[Bassnut]

Very nice Eddie, smooth, but as Stuart says, youve over curved a tad and lost some detail, and outer neb by the heavy clipping. What filter wheel did you use? (if you used one).

[ejcruz]

Thanks again Alex, took your advise including Stuart's and reprocessed the image, results as per my previous post, much happier with the result.

Thank you for the advise Bassnut much appreciated, as mentioned above have reprocessed (link as per my previous post), I 'm sure you will agree that it's a hugh improvement.

For this capture I didn't use a filter wheel, I do have the qhy filter wheel but have not gotten around to using yet, that's the next stage.

Cheers
Eddie

[AlexN]

Glad I could be of assistance mate.. Off to a flying start with the new camera!

[spearo]

Very nice
pinprick stars, great tracking and nice smooth nebulosity
well done
you'd be happy with that outcome
frank

[rat156]

Almost there Eddie, the sky background is still black, it really should be grey to avoid people like me saying "you've clipped the black level". The nebulosity is nice and velvety though.

If I had a similar image I'd post it to show you what I mean, but I haven't (and aren't likely to in the near future by the looks of the weather report).

Don't worry about a bit of noise in the sky area around the nebula, it's normal and expected, they don't just start and stop like this.

Get a hold of the book(s) (he has another as well that's pretty good), cheapest thing you'll buy for astroimaging, pops up now and again on Astromart cheap. Also Adam Block has done a tutorial DVD on the use of CCDStack, I don't have it yet, but will shortly (thanks Ruddy, got my $900 yesterday), aparently it's the Ducks Nuts when it comes to image processing.

Don't reinvent the wheel, someones already done most of the hard work for you.

Cheers
Stuart

[gregbradley]

A simple solution whilst you are learning the basics of Photoshop is to simply use auto levels.;

image/adjustments/autolevels.

That probably will get a better result very easily.

What you want is a bell shaped histogram - that graph that shows the data of the image as a graph. Black clipped means to cut off the left part of that graph and that is the darker parts of the image and the faint dimmer nebula/image parts. So you get a high contrast very black background looking image but you lost a lot of the faint stuff as a cost.

So if you click on levels move that left hand slider further to the right. But you would have to do that with the original image not this saved one as that data is now lost except in the original.

Greg.

[ejcruz]

Thank you Frank, just need to get some Oiii and Sii and will see how it really turns out.

Now that you mentioned it, found in my collection Wodaski - The New CCD Astronomy, appreciate the advise.

Thanks Greg much apprecaited all very good points, I usually don't use PS, so I'll give it another bash and will post.

Cheers
Eddie

[ejcruz]

Using the advise have tried again with my little experience in PS, tried to bring out the grey in the sky background.
http://ejcruz.smugmug.com/photos/534688868_6BzS7-X3.jpg

I think I went overboard with the contrast.

Cheers
Eddie