[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

A huge image, lots to look at and with good colour Mike. Detail is good too, though I found this object a really tough customer. I think from memory I did 9.3 hours with an 8" and found it very noisy and still lacking detail. So by comparison your image is a masterly effort and very good already.

Just some minor issues. Your calibration frames might want checking as I can see coloured pixels in various spots. I have found this often happens when my darks are getting to around 5 months old. So maybe it might pay to check those.

Double your current exposure time is bound to achieve great results and I am looking forward to an even greater image.

Thanks hugely, Paul. You are right about the darks. They are getting a bit stale. Even worse is some quite strange behaviour by either the 16803 chip or the way Apogee handles it. Each frame seems to have a dozen or so quite faint quasi-stellar bright spots. Not after-images (residual or ghost), not hot pixels, but something with an FWHM of about 2.5 pixels. But they are random. In the next shot, they will be somewhere else. I try to find them by automatically searching for spots that are only in one channel, and zapping them. New darks can only help, of course.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Wow, great view of this pair Mike and Trish, a great target for your big beast of a scope and I love the vibrant colours too, who processed that bit..?

I see a lot of variation in the background, is that galactic cirrus? Even if it isn't it looks good anyway

Mike

Thanks muchly Mike! The colour was a team effort. Pretty sure that the background variation is just dodgy flats. Did a complete new set this afternoon!

Very best,
Mike n Trish