Hi All,
I continued imaging while the Moon steadily increased its influence during last week... I had to limit myself to fairly bright targets so I stuck to globulars. The following image was taken under an unforgiving 94% illuminated Moon and I had to battle with some strong gradients but the end result proved much better than I could hope for, so here is the third brightest globular, NGC 6752 in Pavo:
http://www.pbase.com/rolfolsen/image/143154105/original (Hi res version 751KB)
Image details:
LRGB 24:8:8:8m
04/05/2012
10" f/5 Serrurier truss Newtonian
QSI 683wsg with Lodestar guider
This image is a crop of about 80% of the full frame, there was a nasty reflection from the Moon near the top so a slight crop was called for. I also did a thorough collimation prior to taking this image and think I have eliminated most of the coma now. The FWHM was hovering around 2.0"-2.5" which is a bit less than in my previous images so that was promising.
Despite the moonlight there are even a handful of faint background galaxies showing, see if you can spot them
BTW I actually really enjoy the refractor like views that the wire spider provides - look at that, not a diffraction spike in sight! Only an ever so slight hint of them on the 7th magnitude star HD 177999 near the centre
Hope you enjoy this view of one of the more overlooked of the bright globulars (click image link above for best quality version). Comments and critique is most welcome .
Regards,
Rolf