Tarantula - my second DSO from Saturday night

[[1ponders]]

I captured 9 images of the Tarantula Neb in the LMC on Saturday night. I played around with them in PS for a while and was surprised by what came out. I think I got a bit carried away with the central area

Detail.
Canon 300D prime focus to 8"LX200GPS focal reduced to f/6.3.

Images used; 3 Exp @ ISO800 for 120 sec and 3 Exp @ ISO1600 for 60 sec.

Aligned, stacked and processed in PS7. Processing included cropping, levels, curves, cont/bright adjust, sharpening and despeckling.

As with the Keyhole Neb shots the focus is a too soft.

Comments and suggestions appreciated

[ving]

you know thats my fav neb of all time? :)

thanks for the pic :)
yeah the focus is a bit soft hey...

[[1ponders]]

If the wind dies down tonight I might christen the wedge and give it another go. Concentrating on the focus this time:P

[rumples riot]

Not bad for your first shot, focus looks good. You may need to do more length in your exposures.

Still great start. Keep it up.

[Robby]

Nice shot.... Really good detail. Did you guide this at all?
Cheers

[[1ponders]]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys.

Unfortunately ving, no go tonight. The wind died down, still very twinkly, that's when I can see stars. I forgot it was tennis social club tonight. Two courts right next door. :(

No guiding Robby:) You know me point, focus, shoot, fingers crossed :D Thanks again for that info on aligning images Robby

[ving]

no guiding? holly cow!

ice take note. dsos are doable in the dob. no guiding used with this shot! :D

[ballaratdragons]

I might have to get interested in this photo stuff then if I don't have to track the bloomin' things! :confuse3:

[silvinator]

I have to say that I'm very impressed Paul! Well done mate :D I like your motto too, lol :)

[iceman]

Ving, "no guiding" in this sense doesn't mean the scope stayed in the same position for that 60 seconds.
His LX200 still would've been ticking away, right Paul?

[[1ponders]]

Humming along nicely Mike.

No guiding" usually means no adjustments to the automatic tracking. No automatic tracking is perfect even with Periodic Error Control (PEC) so for long exposures, an off-axis guider or guidescope is used to make manual adjustments. The position of a star is manually (usually with a hand controller with goto) kept centered in the center of an illuminated reticle.

These shots are of such short duration that errors on tracking often are not observable, so no manual adjustments were needed.

[iceman]

Told ya Ving! :) Thanks for the explanation Paul.