SMC Mosaic

[avandonk]

After some rain last night's transparency was quite good apart from some early thin cloud.

Canon 5DH, Canon 300mm F2.8 at f/5, Hutech LPR filter.

Two panels, exposures for each 15x(1, 2, 4 min) at 1600 ISO. Fridge at -10c. Usual HDR method. It needs more data but looks good so far.

Full res image 5MB
http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2009_09/SMCmos16.jpg

Bert

[Tom Davis]

Yes, it is nice! I was able to just fit it on my chip (OK, not quite all of it) last year. I like your wide FOV.

http://www.tvdavisastropics.com/astroimages-1_000062.htm

Tom

[DavidU]

Nice job Bert. Is there any info etc on your "fridge"?
Also, what type of helical focuser do you use?

[David Fitz-Henr]

That's a nice wide field shot Bert ! 47 Tucanae has come out particularly well !

[avandonk]

Here is a thread about the fridge

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=34129&highlight=peltier


I use a stepper motor to focus the lens.

Bert

[avandonk]

Here is an enhanced version 7MB from the same data.

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2009_09/SMCmosenhc.jpg


The FOV of the full image is 6.2 X 5.5 degrees.


Below is a 100% crop

Bert

[dpastern]

Whoah that is nice, especially since I spent time on the weekend looking at the SMC, Tuc 47, the other glob in this image (can't remember the catalogue number). Yummy!

Dave

[avandonk]

Managed to suppress the residual gradients with GradientXterminator

here 7MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2009_09/SMCmosenhcgx.jpg


Bert

[gregbradley]

Superb Bert.

I think you must be one of Aussie's finest widefield imagers with your constant development and refinement.

Greg.

[avandonk]

Some of you may have noticed that with modded DSLR's that there can be a red or orange ring around even perfectly focused stars when you use even a very high quality lens. This is because lenses were not designed to accurately focus far red all the way to HA. Lenses are designed only for visible light.

Fortunately ImagesPlus has a star reduction function. I used IP to first star reduce only the red layer until there was no sign of red colour bleed. I then used star reduction slightly on all colour channels equally and then a bit of RL enhancement.

Result here 11MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2009_09/SMCmosenhc2.jpg


Here is an animated gif showing the enhancement on a 100% crop 1MB

http://d1355990.i49.quadrahosting.com.au/2009_09/smcenh.gif

Below are the same two images


This is also very handy for narrow band combination to get rid of any colour haloes.


Bert