After 6 years of abscence I finally have the time and place to get back into this hobby/obsession I used to love.
Things have certainly come a long way since I was imaging 6 years ago so am a little embarassd given the quality of the images everyone is posting to put this up, but I guess you have to start somewhere
This was pretty much a shake down of my gear playing with a new camera, getting focusmax setup and working and wrestling with PHD for guiding using a 50mm finder scope.
The image is yes another M8
Taken from light polluted back yard in Glen Iris through IDAS LPS1 48mm light pollution filter
Camera: QHY10
Scope: Takahashi FS102 at native F8
Mount: MI-250
Guide Scope: 50mm finder
Guide Camera: Orion Starshoot
Exposures: 10 x 7 minutes
Callibration, Alignment and stacking in Nebulosity and final tweaking in Photoshop CS5.5
Did not do much processing on this at all. Just levels and curves and little sharpening. It could do with a lot more work but I think focus was a little soft so not sure its worth it. Also with size of this QHY10 chip the FS102 needs a flattener.
Med Version here:
http://www.dslrfocus.com/gallery/images/M8Med.jpg
Large Version here:
http://www.dslrfocus.com/gallery/images/M8Large.jpg
If one of you processsing gurus out there has the time I would love to post a link to the raw callibated stacked image and see what it could look like in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. Will help me knwo what to aim for in terms of processing.
In fact here is the 36mb Tiff file in case someone feels like having a go. I just cropped it as edges had crazy amounts of elongation.
http://www.dslrfocus.com/M8raw.tif
Fixed broken link and added another version