MAS dark skies first picture

[multiweb]

Here's the first pic I processed from Saturday night. It cleared out around 2:00am and we got very good seeing and transparency until sunrise. I did 50min on Orion, about an hour on M78 and 30min or so on NGC104 prior. Humayun spent a bit of time to teach me how to drift align :thumbsup: so my guiding was pretty good that night. :) Although more data would have been nice the session was a bit of a shotgun imaging in sucker holes until midnight when the clouds thinned out.

This is 50min on M42 at prime focus with the QHY8 at prime focus on my 5" newt in 10x5min. First time I've had a clear run since August so I was pretty happy. Getting back on the bike now :P

[toryglen-boy]

thats a beauty Marc, you gotta be happy with that!

is that the reflections of a colimation centre marker i see there?

:lol:


seriously mate, i would be delighted with that, nice one

:thumbsup:

[Hagar]

Nice one Marc. Good to see you're back on the bike.

[strongmanmike]

Well that's pretty dam good for such a "quicky" mate :eyepop:

Interestingly, your FOV with the 5" Newt and QHY8 is pretty much identical to mine with the FLI PL11002 and Starfire :)

I hope to do this field next clear night/s :thumbsup:

Mike

[DavidU]

Marc, awesome for short subs and a 5".
I hate you:lol:
Beautiful !

[multiweb]

Thanks Duncan. Yes MPCC reflections. I could have rejected them but I didn't bother (read: got too lazy) as they don't distract from the main pic. I go them much smaller from what they were though. :)


Thanks Doug. Yes. I'm happy to be out there imaging again.:thumbsup:


Thanks mate. Same FOV? How cool is that! :eyepop: Let's swap then :thumbsup:
Ok with ya? ;)


:lol: Thanks David - glad you liked it. :thumbsup:

[lacad01]

Excellent work! Running Man looks fantastic also (personally I think Running Man should be called a Logie Award :))

[Omaroo]

Great M42 Marc. The outer nebulosity is fabbo. :thumbsup: Very nice :)

[multiweb]

Thanks mate. Logie? Which way are you looking at it? :)



Thanks Chris. Turned out ok considering it's relatively "data starved". I mean you were there. Only cleared out fairly late. :P

[sjastro]

A very natural looking M42 Marc.

Steven

[multiweb]

Thanks Steven. Glad you've noticed. :) Yeah I didn't do anything but for a bit of saturation boost on the colors. So that's pretty much the natural colours. Not my best M42 as far as integration time goes but certainly my best to date in term of details quality . I'm hoping to build up on this one and add more weather allowing.

[bmitchell82]

love the colours on that one marc, and the dust looks dusty! :) maybe some selective highlights/shadows colour boosting and masking it in will give you a real punch in the main areas :) look forward to your added data version

[jjjnettie]

That's really nice Marc.
I know we should all be gathering more data for our images, but honestly, when you only have a limited amount of time, all you want to do is capture as many different objects as you can.

[multiweb]

Thanks Brendan. :) I kept the levels up so the light looks natural in the overall picture. But you can load the pic in PS and use the shadow/highlight tool. The core's details there although I doubt you'll see the trapezium clearly. It's still very bright.



Thanks jjj. Yeah two and a half hours before sunrise was really short. I know I shouldn't have but I tried to fit in a bit of variety in that time slot. I can't help it. :P

[bmitchell82]

I know the feeling of sort time. my shot of Orion was taken while the gradient of the sun was fast closing in on m42 :) to the point i was taking my 15 sec shots while it was light :)

2 x 10 min
9 x 2 min
9 x 1 min
9 x 30 sec
9 x 15 sec :)
= aproximately 1 hr before dawn :) first sub was 03:36 :)

http://s700.photobucket.com/albums/ww3/brendanmitchell1982/?action=view&current=Orion-Final-HQ-AFC.jpg

[jase]

Lovely image Marc. It certainly does have a natural feel about it with the pastel like colours on display. Well done.

[multiweb]

Wow! :eyepop: That's a terrific shot Brendan. I can't remember seeing that one being posted. You've holding up on us? ;) What scope and camera did you use on that pearler?




Thanks Jase - glad you liked it. :thumbsup:

[mill]

A very nice and natural looking shot Marc with plenty of detail :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Thanks Martin, good seeing is rewarding alright. :)

[bmitchell82]

that pic was taken with my sw 10" dob mounted on the EQ6 guided with my 15 dollar guide scope and a Modified 40d MPCC, no darks no flats no bias. just 2.7 degrees and iso 200! theres a few other shots there as well, just to show you what kind of photos i like taking :)

[Octane]

Marc,

Wow! For such short exposure time that has come up so great.

Pity about those little doughnuts, but, I'm sure you could remove them in post.

Again, looking forward to a more exposure-fuelled image! :)

Regards,
Humayun

[multiweb]

I looked at your gallery - pretty cool. :thumbsup:



Thanks H. Yeah reflections from the MPCC. I could have painted them out during stacking as I did a meridian flip but I didn't bother as I'll stack more on top of this data later on. Actually that's why there are two donuts. One for each side of the meridian. :P

[Paul Haese]

Nice looking image for such little data collected. Only vague noise visible on my screen. Colours look pretty good too.

[multiweb]

Thanks Paul. Yes very little data but exceptional seeing IMO and good polar alignment thanks to Humayun.:)