Still Another M20

[loc46south]

Hi All - Last week the weather let up long enough the capture a few stray photons - they look remarkably like M20 - Triffid Nebula.

First Light image with a SkyWatcher 120ED Equinox - optically I was very pleased with the result - BUT the focuser proved to be a pain in the butt (prone to sag and creep) and a replacement Moonlite is on the water to me as I speak.

It is a Hybrid image - ST8XME for Luminance and ST2000XCM for Colour.

http://www.pbase.com/loc46south/image/84243681

Comments Welcome - :welcome:

[toryglen-boy]

err .... where is it?

[multiweb]

Very nice picture. Lovely colors. A bit soft maybe but nothing one round of deconvolution wouldn't fix. Nice work. :thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

I can confidently say that it IS M20. Nice work too.
Can we have more info on exposure times, processing etc?

[telecasterguru]

Great colour and a lot of depth.

Frank

[strongmanmike]

That looks quite nice Geoff, has a rather grand feel to it.

Nice use of two lots of data too

...Oh, and I love this shot at your web site :lol:

http://www.pbase.com/loc46south/image/84932674

I've been close to that sort of mess too though:

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/66204409/original

Mike

[Tamtarn]

Your new scope and the hybrid blend produced a good result Geoff :thumbsup:

[Hagar]

Now that is up close ..... The scope seems to perform very nicely but I still wonder why companies sell a telescope as a premium scope with a sub standard focuser fitted. It is a real pain to buy something new only to have to replace a part to make it fully functional. They really do themselves a disservice. Maybe one day one of the chinese manufacturers will wake up to the fact and will scoop the market while the others play catchup. Rant Rant Rant.
Nice image by the way.

[Alchemy]

looks alright to me, pity about the focuser, i dont think the ed120,s are a cheap scope so the focuser should be better than that.

[loc46south]

Thanks for taking the time to look & Comment -

Firstly it wasn't really fair to flame the scope - its a great unit for the price - it had a SBIG camera and an OPTEC Focuser hanging off the back and thats a fair bit of weight - it coped as best it could - for visual work it is excellent. Value for money - Certainly.

Image Exposure - total 12 hours over 4 nights - 5 hours Luminance and 7 Hours Colour. Both shot in sequences of 120 sec-300sec-600sec & 1200 Sec Flats & Darks applied - chip temp -25 both units. Images processed and aligned in Maxim V5 and CCDStack. Colour combination and assembly in CS3 - (which was were it all went wrong)

Intent was to create a HDR image to include the background stars of the Milky Way - technical ability not up to the task yet - hence the soft image - I got lost somewhere in the layer and masking system of Photoshop.

http://www.pbase.com/loc46south/image/114727702

Luminance image to give some idea of how it should have ended up - will try again later.

Cheers