Leyburn Brumby

[RobF]

I took this on the 2nd night of my first ever trip to the Leyburn dark sky site in SE Qld, after chasing low lying Messier objects. The wind was much kinder on the Sunday night fortunately so little loss of subs and decent tracking. I'd like to say I've tried to be creative with framing, but actually I botched half the red frames and lost about 1/5 of the bottom of the image I'd planned to get :ashamed:

This is LRGB 15:12:12:12, all 3 mins subs, unbinned Lum, RGB all binnedx2, taken with QHY9 through 8" Newt/MPCC.

I'd hoped to get some Ha recently, but camera problems have prevented so far. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to get this from 30mins of data.

[astroron]

A few artifacts in there Rob, but it's alright seeing what you lost ;)
Cheers :thumbsup:

[RobF]

Thanks Ron
It's a hellavu lot better than anything I've ever managed from the 'burbs.
You guys don't know how good you've got with clear skies and air :sadeyes:

[RickS]

Looks very good for 30 mins, Rob! Sorry to hear about your ongoing camera woes...

[ozstronomer]

Lovely shot Rob, I sure hope you can get that camera sorted out.

[Alchemy]

Coming along well for 30 mins,more time plus the Ha data will solid out the effort.
Looking forward to having a go at the horse head in Ha myself soon,

What's the go with the camera?

[adman]

I very much like your framing there - nothing wrong with that.

Adam

[RobF]

Thanks guys. It was quite a lift to dig this one out of the vault :)
Clive, I've had a few episodes of bright lines with the 9 over recent months. Theo has been bending over backwards to assist and replaced a board for me. I honestly thought it was licked until last weekend. I'm going to take a good hard look at all my connections and power supply. This is the sort of thing I've seen below. On Sat I could still see a starfield behind it, but I don't think my processing is up to removing this alas!

https://picasaweb.google.com/UserRobF/Jul12011?authkey=Gv1sRgCPXmhe_0xtaE 7AE#5624313144224564114

[RobF]

Adam, this was the Lum data - pitfalls of mono imaging :P

[Alchemy]

I see your issue, if it's intermittent its possible it's a connection type issue. But yeah, you cant do much with that through the middlenof the image.

My experience with Theo has been the same as yours, he is most helpful and willing to help regardless, so it's nice to have the backup.

Best of luck...... BTW couple of things, I like the framing, and one of your spider vanes may have a slight bend/twist in it, I used to get a similar effect when I had a newt and that was the cause of the differing spikes.

[RobF]

Yes, I was thinking same thing re the vanes too. This data is coming up 6 months old now and I'm usually more careful with the 2ndary and vanes setup. In fact Adam had a thread here some time ago where the effects of mis-aligned vanes was clearly illustrated.

[LucasB]

I think that's pretty good for 30 minutes! Some dust donuts there but for the limited amount of data it is still a nice pic.:thumbsup:
Lucas

[RobF]

Cheers Lucas. Glad you enjoyed it :)

[Ross G]

A beautiful photo Rob.

I love the composition.


Ross.

[jase]

What a ripper result Rob with a small data set. You should be happy with that. More please...

[RobF]

Many thanks Ross and Jase - that gives me quite a lift during a bit of an imaging drought :)

[bmitchell82]

Not a bad crack of the whip at all there Rob, with the spider vanes i find that using a metal ruler or such layed across soon shows up any miss aligned vanes :) I use it when I have done a complete pull down!

Look forward to seeing some images pour out of that 200mm mirror once the qhy9 gets back!

[RobF]

It's probably just a sign of how much I've still got to learn Brendan, but it's funny how you work on a number of objects that fail to come to life due to lack of data (which you sort of expect, but it still seems a shame) then all of a sudden some forgotten data on a faint object you think will be rubbish comes out half decent!

Good tip re the ruler - I'll have to include this in my remote checklist after transporting the scope to a star-party.

[bmitchell82]

Mate when you stop learning your dead! :) Its when you have little things that keep bugging you and you go and find out whats going on to fix them is when you really start learning the good stuff! My old 254 newt is a classic example of that and as such its getting nearly to the point that i cant improve it any further! Just a few more things and shes completed.

As for data. its always the way, did a bit of work a little while ago with the 254 and a SBIG 402ME which has a tiny sensor, if you look in my gallery under galaxies you will see the effort there. amazing detail for a sub 1MP camera! and then sometimes you get 4hrs worth of data that end up looking like spew. :(

Im hoping to get under the stars at the end of the month to let the newt do its thing now i have all the correct spacers for the MPCC QHY9 and everything is tuned to within a hair of a bees..... :) We might have to compare our HH data!:thumbsup:

[mill]

For 30 minutes it looks really good.
When you get more data it will look excellent.

[gregbradley]

For 30 minutes that is very good and the luminance shot is Sweet!

Greg.

[RobF]

You've got the sucker singing so well now Brendan I don't think it would be a very fair contest. Hope you do get a well earned break from studies soon though and get out there!



Thanks Martin! Yep, hoping to hoe into Orion again soon hopefully.



Thanks Greg :)
Thought I better own up and show what I was really trying to achieve.

[Hagar]

Very nice Rob. Short subs again. Whats going on in QLD? Everyone seems to be belting out images with relatively short subs.

[RobF]

Hi Doug

I guess 2 main reasons for the sub length:

1. KAF8300 has relatively lowish well depth, and with the Newt it starts to saturate bright star within 2-3 mins (and there are some very bright stars in this field and nearby). 8" at F5 is a lot different to say F7 in a 4" refractor as you'd know.

2. Maths and object visibility - this was back in April and I only had an hour or two before Orion set, so I roughly tried split my time 50:50 Lum and RGB then get enough of each filter to have at least 4 images (less than that and you don't get effect noise control during sub integration regardless of sub length I find).

Hopefully I'll soon be able to get back into imaging Orion in more detail if work and weather conspire correctly ;)

[bmitchell82]

Meh my 254 is good for 10min subs and still gets decent star colour. it's all in the processing rob. With stable guiding in now pushing out into the15 and 20 min bracket to really pick up the faint stuff. :D

[RobF]

It's true there's all sort of processing options, but optimal exposure time is a science in itself (sky glow, faintest object luminosity, brightest star, imaging time available, number of shots per filter, allowing for sensor spectrum sensitivity). More than one way to skin a cat. It's just a fact though that brighter stars will be right out on the right of my histogram at a few minutes, and the more you saturate them the more work you've got recovering true RGB colours from their outer edges later. All part of the fun :)