Ngc 3576

[Peter.M]

Hi guys and gals,

Last night was a bit hit and miss. The seeing was absolutely horrible, and light cloud cover sweeped over my house in waves. But determined as ever I lugged my system outside. A few weeks ago I tryed my luck at this target, and I think I have bested that effort so I am happy. Locking the collimation bolts seems to have helped alot, stars at the corners look far better.

Not the pinprick stars that Peter Ward has in his rendition of this but I am happy with the outcome anyway.

Thanks for looking.
Pete.

[alistairsam]

hi Peter,

that looks very good. nice faint details as seen in this nasa apod http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080326.html
that inner glow reminds of the glowing rose and bell jar in B&TB.
which camera did you use and was it the 8" F4? i'm guessing the slight noise are jpeg artefacts. I have the same scope and the MPCC and QHY8 and would love to get alteast some of the details in your shot.

[Peter.M]

It was taken with the 8 inch F4, the subs were 5 minutes 2X2 for colour and 10 minutes 1X1 for HA taken with my baader 7nm filter.

I would think your setup would be able to capture this. The uncompressed Tiff is far less noisy but when saving as a jpg I set the quality to around 4 so that I dont have to shrink it as much to upload.

[multiweb]

Superb. :thumbsup:

[telecasterguru]

Peter,

Well done on the image. Nice detail. What capture and control software are you using?



Frank

[Peter.M]

I am using Maxim to control the camera, and PHD to guide. I would probally use Maxim to guide through my USB 2 EQ5 cable, but when I plug my camera into the computer it drops the EQmod connection.

It is a pain and means I have to be very selective with the order I do things because after I take a test shot I can no longer control the mount. I should look into why its doing it because it makes multiple night projects impossible (framing is impossible to get right).

[alistairsam]

Hi,
have you tried png format? I find that a lot better in quality with similar size as jpegs.

[Peter.M]

This gives you an idea of what I was dealing with last night. I slapped the DSLR on the mount after and took some quick shots.

[Ross G]

A very good photo Peter.

Nice colour. Good looking stars too.

Ross.