M78 with Mak/Newt

[Ken]

Hi spent a few nights on this one, the EQ6 was playing up so I ended with about 30% of the total number of subs that were taken.:mad2: Taken with orion 190 Mak/Newt. and QHY9 camera. Lum.= 1 hour at 1x1 bin red= 2hours green 1.5 hours blue = 2hours colour all 2x2 binned. all 5 minute subs. thanks for looking.
Clear skies Ken.

[AlexN]

Stunning work Ken..

Personally, I would have spent 2.5hrs more on L and 1hr per colour channel, however your image has turned out rather beautiful, so I guess I might have ended up with rubbish :D

Its one of those targets that I fully intended to image this year, and I don't know if I'll get to it or not now.. :(

[Tilt]

Marvelous Ken, the Mak/Newt does it again :thumbsup: such an interesting scope. Shame the EQ6 was playing up, however, you did still managed a heap of data. The dynamic range of the QHY9 sure does show my DSLR efforts a clean pair of heels, I must upgrade one of these days to a cooled CCD :)

Michael

[multiweb]

Great shot Ken! :thumbsup: I've always found that one very hard to image.

[Ken]

Thanks Marc this might make a good Hyperstar shot with plenty of faint dust in the area. Alex I had to throw away about 2.5 hours of lum. data because of erratic tracking might be time for a tune up, the mount is at its weight limit with the ed80 sitting on top of the 190 needing 4 counter weights to balance. Michael the dslrs certainly have been good value with there large ccd or cmos sensor but they do loose a bit in the warmer conditions, the price of recent cooled ccds is a bargain compared to a few years ago.
Clear skies Ken

[telecasterguru]

Ken,

Your image looks sensational. Sorry that you lost so much data but you may have to have another go to pick up some more.

Frank

[AlexN]

Ken, It might be worth trying to bring the load center distance closer to the polar axis by using a side by side plate for your guide scope, and also considering something small and light like the Orion ST80, weighs about 1/2 what an ED80 weighs and for guiding is more than adequate... The 190 MN is F/5.3 is it not? given the focal length, you could reduce the weight much further by dropping the guide scope in favor of a modified finder scope with your guide camera mounted in that... It should be more than adequate for guiding your Mak Newt, and weighing in at about 300g, much lighter than a guide scope..

I used to have an EQ6 heavily loaded with a C11, piggybacked ZS66 guide scope, 4 counterweights, and all the other miscellaneous doo-hickies that go along with that.. It finally hit me that I was getting average results because I had far too much weight on the mount, I then moved to an off axis guider, removing the piggy backed guide scope, the piggyback scope rail and a few other bits and bobs and the results started to flow in...

[Tilt]

Don't temp me Ken :lol: I can see myself getting into maximum trouble if I have to explain to my wife how a few $k disappeared to buy something called a 'cooled CCD'.

[DavidU]

I love this image. Well done.

[David Fitz-Henr]

Very nice image Ken - nice colour work !

[Ken]

Thanks for the reply Frank I did manage nearly another hour of lum. last night, might also be lucky tonight. Alex you have some good ideas on lightening the load on the mount, as I use a old st4 auto guider I need to manually center a guide star with an illuminated eyepiece because the st4 ccd chip is very tiny. The zs66 guide scope sounds great I think a modified finder scope would make finding and focusing difficult but I might be wrong.

Michael you must have a few spare dslrs by now you could sell!!:rofl: go on, you know you want a cooled mono ccd :thumbsup: and sure you can find a way to keep your wife happy :rofl:

thanks David and David for the kind words

clear skies ( they really are tonight )
Ken

[jjjnettie]

Lovely work. Sorry you lost so much time, but you've done well with what you managed to keep.

[Prickly]

Great shot and nicely framed Ken. I think you have picked the perfect fl for this object with the Mak Newt.

Pity about the lost frames but you can always add more later.

I really like the dust lanes.

As has been mentioned by others worth investing another imaging session for this one! You have some great data there.

Cheers
David

[Ken]

Thanks for the reply Nettie and David , I added 2 hours extra luminance data and took flat field frames and reprocessed the whole thing. The extra luminance did nothing for the image only brightening the background and washing out the colour the sky was a bit hazy.:(
clear skies Ken

[mill]

Great image Ken and what a pity that you lost a load of pictures :(

[bluescope]

There's lot of dark neb in there Ken ... I tweaked it out a bit ... I hope you don't mind ... not better just different ;)

This is a tweak of the first image you posted ... hadn't seen the second post.

:thumbsup:

[bmitchell82]

Nice image, the data is definately there, but like i say for everything the difference between a good image and a great image is the processing behind them which takes years of experience and fiddling :). Keep up at it!

As for Alex's comment on the finder guider it will work. I utilize it and it works very very well. The finder that im using is the Skywatcher one and focus is easy as the front mirror cell is a focuser in anycase. as long as your focal point is about correct you can nail it and have a massive field of view to get your stars with! I use a Meade DSI and there hasnt been one time that a guide star hasn't presented itself!

As for your Lum channel you have to really nail this one as it gives you the clarity, i use synthetic lum because i utilize a DSLR but ide guess that its virutally the same method. I push the data to a inch of its life and then a little bit more then when i blend it back though photoshop i can scale it back for the right balance, its proved to be very powerful at bring out clarity and brightness.

Keep up the good work though:thumbsup:

[Ken]

Thanks Martin yes it gets a bit frustrating imaging night after night for very little data hopefully that is behind me now. Steve you have rung every bit out of the image while still looking natural good job. Brenden thanks for the lengthy reply, I replaced the ed80 with a old 400mm telephoto lens that was unused by removing the rear section and screwing on a eyepiece holder from a 2" diagonal. I made a pair of smaller mounting rings to reduce even more weight, focusing is easy by turning the front focus tube. These changes have allowed me to remove 1 counterweight, the tracking has improved to the point where I only lost 2, 5 min. subs in 3 hours :) Yes the processing is endless , always learning something new.
Clear skies Ken

[RobF]

Very very nice Ken, despite all the challenges. You've really started to bring out some wonderful clarify and colour in the nebulosity. This is a faint one that few people seem to really get to "sing". Thanks for showing the fruits of your labour.

[Prickly]

Hi Ken,

Your image following a dynamic background extraction in pixinsight plus a histogram.

Cheers
David

[Ken]

Thanks for the encouragement Rob, David leave the image alone and I will give you some beer at spsp :lol:
Clear skies Ken.

[Prickly]

just encouraging you to use pixinsight - its free!

Look forward to SPSP! The images always look better after a beer or two (better than any image processing known to man).

I think we can say we've Ken'd (or canned!) the image following the beer.

Cheers
David