Finally the clouds stayed put long enough for me to have a crack at
anything with my QHY9. The moon is up and blazing so Ha it was.
Love the extra res and improved image scale. It's refreshing to see all the details not being hacked in 4 by debayering.
I did 10x5min on M16/17, M8/20 and also the LMC which was very low just above my neighbourg roof above the M5/M7 junction so I wasn't expecting much but I'm stoked and really surprised that I got some data regardless.
I wouldn't have captured anything even close to what I got that night with the QHY8 as far a SNR goes with the moon. The new sensor seems a bit noisier but also much more sensitive and with longer subs and more of them I'm sure I would have got a lot less noise. I also did Dark subtraction from a previous library and flat fielding on the night without any problem. The camera was very easy to focus from Maxim and image capture was also fairly straight forward. I only ever used Nebulosity before.
Large M8/20 is
here [1.4MB]
Large M16/17 is
here [1.2MB] and
Large LMC is
here [1.3MB]
Excuse the framing, I just pointed and shot real quick just in case those damn clouds came back like last time
The lens was the SMC Pentax-M 200mm fully open. I captured with MaximDL and guided with PHD. Still have to work out the guiding in Maxim so I stuck to what I know works. The TEC was set to -20c.
PS: on the test focus shot of Rigil Kent I have a black line during readout. It's got something to do with 'clamping' to tick on or off in the Ascom driver dialog box for the cam. Haven't worked that one out yet. Next session. I read it only happens on bright stars.