Fine tuning the newt

[Peter.M]

I took a picture of this nebula a few weeks ago, but I was not happy with a few things in it. I spent most of last night on collimation, guiding and focus all the basics to get tight round stars. At the end of the night this was one colour frame each at 3minutes binned 2x2 and 2 10 minute hydrogen alpha frames. I am not entirely happy with my processing, the colour balance is out at the moment but I will reprocess later today.

I have work now but I am STOKED at the guiding and collimation improvements.

All the work was worth it I think. Let me know what you guys think.

[bmitchell82]

Not bad at all mate, though you still have a bit of drifting vertically. which is not due to collimation, its due to guiding. Make sure your polar alignment is good, and that your guide calibration is spot on without it your guiding will always be skew.

One way to check to see if your collimation is right is though the defraction spikes. Run say a 5-10 second shot on a reasonably bright star while guiding. Look at the defraction spikes in relation to what should be the rainbows, if your secondary is centered properly then the rainbows will all start at the same radius from the star and all be perpendicular to the actual spike eg they are flowing in concentric rings. :) I only figured this out recently but its a good trick to get you on the right track.

the other thing is are you running maxim?

[Peter.M]

I am running maxim for image capture.

[bmitchell82]

are you running maxim for guiding too? if not why not it is far far more capable than PHD not to mention quicker and easier to adjust things on the fly!

[Peter.M]

I would guide with maxim but my qhy9 is still stuffing my eqmod connection. The only way I can work things at the moment is to do all my alignmaster things, add some alignment stars and slew to the target. Then I plug the camera in and lose my eqmod connection. At this point I can guide the mount with the st4 cable but not pulse guiding.

[troypiggo]

Have you talked to Theo (gama) about the problem? He's the man here in Aus for QHY cameras.

[bmitchell82]

Are you running XP or Win7 32bit? if so i have the old drivers that work seemlessly!

[Peter.M]

I am running win7 32 bit. You can email me the drivers at Peter.merrick@adam.com.au . I have emailed Theo about it and he suggested some things im in the process of trying.

[Peter.M]

Here is my reprocess of the data, I tryed alot of methods of combination and eventually settled on this.

[Peter.M]

The last version I processed of this I used the RGB stars. Previous to this I have been using HA stars as they are in my opinion better looking and less distracting to the image (being smaller).

I had read that people usually reduce the size of their stars when binning or doing HARGB composites so I thought I would try my hand at it.

I also wanted to submit a larger resolution image so people can critique the image properly. It is quite noisy at this resolution but from such a short integration time I expect this.

The image is about 5 mb if you load the full resolution one, but it is also available in lo res.

http://astrobin_images.s3.amazonaws.com/ec9a1898-c863-473d-8b5d-6df15bf0964d.jpg

Thanks again

Pete.

[cventer]

I realy like this new version a lot. Well done. Damn tough to get those blends but you nailed it.

[Peter.M]

Thanks very much mate, I quite like this one too.

[Paul Haese]

I like the second process, that has great colour and the composition is nice too.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Hi Peter,

Ilike the second image, it's interesting to see the difference between my image of NGC 3324 using an unmodded DSLR, and yours with hydrogen alphpa filter and QHY9 ccd.

Cheers,

Justin.

[Peter.M]

Thanks Paul, I was going to try and get out tonight and sink some more time into it but it dosent look like that is going to happen now :(



I had a look at your picture a few days ago and im glad to see you are getting some pleasing results from your telescope with the MPCC. I like the blue reflection neb from the star in her head from the bright star, and similar reflections in the cluster that are harder to bring out with hydrogen alpha luminance.

[multiweb]

Great field across. You've got your rig singing now. :thumbsup:

[Peter.M]

Thanks Marc, now Im looking forward to finding somewhere dark to take my gear. Im joining the local astronomy group this week so I can go to their dark site nights.

[RobF]

Looking really good Peter. Glad to hear it's all coming together. Just in time for some decent Autumn/Winter weather hopefully!

[Peter.M]

Thanks Rob, Im looking forward to finishing afternoonshift at 10pm in winter and imaging till dawn. I will be attempting to add to this this weekend if the clouds bugger off for long enough.

[Peter.M]

A few nights ago I added some more HA to the frame, and I have just got around to processing it.

The frame definitely benifits from the added data.

[RobF]

That's beautiful Peter. Fantastic tracking and great colour balance, particularly for the difficult Ha blend.

[bmitchell82]

Your kickin some goals there Peter! :) Newts take a little bit of learning but once you figure it out :D happy days