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First serious Galaxy imaging attempt
Hi everyone,
Last night was a nice clear night so I decided to give my first real attempt to polar align the CGEM as accurately as I could and attempt to image my first galaxy using autoguiding and multiple subs. I took a photo of the Sombraro Galaxy back in June, but that was a last photo taken just as I was packing up, no guiding, no serious attemtion and all I had was a blur.
Last night I started with the Jewel Box in Crux... 5x30sec subs and 5x1 min subs... then I moved onto M96, took 10 x 1 minute subs and 10 x 5 minute subs. Last of the night I found M100 and took 5 x 5 minute subs and 1 x 10 minute sub before I had to packup to get ready for work.
I processed and stacked the images in Nebulosity 3, then shrunk the images in photoshop to try and make the images look sharper.
Both Galaxy exposures were taken through a Celestron UHC/LPR filter, and all images were taken with a unmodded Canon 40D, f6.8 focal reducer/CC on the NexStar 8SE.
My stars look fuzzy and not sharp points of light, I'm quite sure that I was in focus. I used a Bahtinov mask to focus before exposing.... I would greatly appreciate if anyone can give me any advise on how to improve on these images so they actually look like galaxies and not just smudges.
Cheers,
Mariusz
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