47 Tuc and NGC 121

[CapturingTheNight]

Hello all,

I was originally going to post this image as a question. The small feature in the lower left hand corner had me really intrigued as to what it was. At first I thought it was a stacking artifact, but, no, all the subs contain it. Then I thought it may have been a reflection of the bright core of 47 Tuc in my image train, until I finally found an online image faintly featuring it as well. Once I knew it was a real deep sky object I really wanted to find out what it was called, but I couldn't find a reference to it anywhere. I was just about to postt it here and ask, when I came across this site http://www.cloudsofmagellan.net.au/index.htm and there it was in one of the maps of the SMC. NGC 121.
Any way. To cut a long story short. I had the compressed file ready to go so I thought I may as well post it and see what you all think. Critique very welcome.
Cheers
Greg

18/10/2011
Canon 1000D
Baader MPCC
10" F/4 Newtonian
NEQ6 Pro Goto Mount
Unguided (this was really just a few test exposures- not a proper go at it)
10 x 15 secs + 20 x 30 secs
ISO 400
Deep Sky Stacker then PS CS5.1

102733

[Ross G]

Hi Greg,

Photo looks very good with nice detail.

Pretty good for an unguided shot.

I am trying to get photos with an 8" F4 at the moment and I am having big problems with focus and guiding. My stars look like ovals.


Ross.

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you very much Ross. :D The best thing I brought in terms of focus is a Bahtinov focus mask. So quick and easy to focus with one of them. As for guiding- I spent a lot of time getting my polar allignment pretty good, so I can generally get over 5 minutes without the stars moving, so my synguider autoguider is barely kicking in at all. I hope you get those issues sorted soon.
Greg

[bmitchell82]

If your getting 5 min photos without guiding on a EQ6 you must have the grand masters version sitting in your hands. I actually would like to see how well mine does next time and see how long i can go before my stars start to egg because i have tuned the guts out of it :)

[alistairsam]

Hi Greg,

Did you use drift alignment to get your polar alignment right?

[midnight]

Very nice Greg. Polar alignment must have been pretty close. I'm still struggling with my 8" F4 but I think my problem is more flexure than alignment.

Well done!
Darrin...

[astronobob]

Hi Greg, Good resolution here, Your nice focusing helps a lot to bring out the individual Stars, well done !
I did some time with 47 Tuc last year and referanced this Glob about the stars it contains and found out that quite a lot of the Stars are Red giants ? Hence , I think the overall blue colour in your Image may need toning down a tad, hope you dont mind me saying !
I found that finding the reds early in the processing and Saturate them works a treat ?
None the less, this Glob is always spectacular and your scale really shows this Glob up very well, Nice job !

[CapturingTheNight]

I can get up to 5 minutes unguided occasionally but not all the time. It depends on how well I setup and whether my lucky rabbits foot hits the horseshoe over my left sholder or my right ;)



No, I have not. I spent a lot of time crawling around on my hands and knees looking through the polar scope. Some nights I get it better than others. When I go the next step and permanently setup in an obs I will use drift align to really fine tune it. I find my current method adequate for what I am doing at the moment.



Thank you so much for the great feedback Darrin :D Pretty happy with this considering it was really just a few unguided test shots. Can't wait to do it properly one day.



Thank you so much for the feedback and critique/advice Bob :D I really appreciate it. This was really just a few unguided test shots, so when I do it properly one day I will certainly take your advice on board and hopefully do it justice.

[Hagar]

This has come up very nice Greg. The only suggestion I have is to try lifting the red and yellow saturation to lift the red/yellow stars in the glob. It may also be an idea just to reduce the overall green a little bit.

This image will give you the idea. Sorry about the quality it's a bit hard playing with an already compressed JPG file.

[mill]

That is a very nice pic of 47Tuc Greg.

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you very much for the feedback, processing tip, and repro Doug :D I will certainly do that when I properly image this glob soon. This was really just a few unguided test exposures to see how it looked in my field of view. I'll give it some proper time when the weather cooperates again and following your advice, hopefully do it justice.



Thank you very much Martin :D