Jewel Box

[mswhin63]

With a break in the weather I got the gear together late and set it up for some imaging.

Scope - My new TS 80mm APO Triplet :thumbsup:
Camera - Unmodified Canon 450D
Mount - HEQ5Pro unguided (having a few teething problems)
Total 40 Lights 15 seconds each @ 800 ISO and 40 Dark and 20 library Offset Bias's

After all the imaging I forgot to put on the counter-weights so the scope I believe was a bit out of balance and may have been the affect on tracking. I could only get reasonably stable at 15 seconds this time round. I do believe Jewel Box might be too small a target for the 80mm but was concerned about light pollution and tracking to pursue darker subject matter. Other bright targets though are behind a house (don't have a lot of room out back)

Any other assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Full image (14MB) - http://www.waelect.com.au/mswhin63/Deepsky/Open%20Clusters/index.html#2011_06_21_Jewel_Box.png

Cropped Jewels (7MB) - http://www.waelect.com.au/mswhin63/Deepsky/Open%20Clusters/index.html#2011_06_21_Jewel_Box_Cro p.png

[Ross G]

Hi,

I like the colours.

Your stars are nice and round so your tracking isn't that bad.

What problems are you having with your HEQ5Pro?


Ross.

[mswhin63]

I like the colours as well, far better than my lens work.

I think it is polar alignment. I am using Alignmaster and it said I was in with 1 arc sec (fluke alignment) but on a 30 second exposure the trails are quite noticeable.

[mswhin63]

I think to get some comment I need to place a lo res in here. I have added some extra images taken totaling 57 lights. 17 of the light are 1600 ISO.

This is my first scope image so I must need some refining.

Hi Res - http://waelect.com.au/mswhin63/Deepsky/Open%20Clusters/index.html#2011_06_21_Jewel_Box_2.p ng

Lo rez below.

[midnight]

Malcolm, I think your colour level is probably too far off dark (ie you could shift the histogram to the left a bit).

This is something I have been experimenting on to avoid the excessive "lightness" in the darker areas which I think this appears to be.

There's definitely colour in there but image processing is a whole new can of worms once you start getting data with nice round stars.

Looking forward to seeing more out of your new scope. I need to get back to using mine. I'm only using it as a guide scope at the moment. Just need a clear night down here.

Darrin...

[mswhin63]

Thanks Darrin, Processing is something that is going to take some time, I had played with darkness and have changed this one, fairly simple job, Sometimes though by darkening too much it may miss some low mag stars, but there is I suppose a limit to how far you set the histogram :bashcomp:.

I changed the high rez as well may need to refresh.

Managed some shot couple of hours ago :astron: , only downloaded them to my processing PC little while ago and hope to have a go at processing them tomorrow.

:2thumbs: