First go at Centaurus A Galaxy & Sombrero Galaxy

[wayne anderson (Wayne)]

Finally I found the time to setup the scope after the long move from the (liquid)Sunshine Coast QLD to the Hunter Valley NSW, our new house is just far enough away from the lights of town to have a very dark sky.

This time I tried to do PEC training on the RA & DEC drives this gave a slightly better result with tracking but I really need to do several updates to minimise periodic tracking error a little more.

Same stats for both Centaurus A Galaxy & Sombrero Galaxy, I think I stretched the curves a little too much in the processing.

90 x 25sec subs at ISO 1600 (total 37mins alt/az no guiding)
NO darks or flats (I was just testing the setup)
12 " LX200 (alt/az setup)
Sony Nex-3 Camera
Stacked in DSS edited in GIMP

[blink138 (Pat)]

nice wayne...... such short exposures....still!
with the darker skies mate have you not tried longer lights?
really like the sombrero
pat

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Nice, Wayne!

[wayne anderson (Wayne)]

Thanks Laurie & Pat , i tried longer lights but with my alt/az setup and no guiding the field rotation gives very blobby stars and a loss of detail in the image so keeping exposures short minimises this effect. I have now managed to get field de-rotator very cheap and now just need some adapters for it to fit my setup, so next to get is an OAG setup and long exposures should work well. Hopefully soon i will get this setup but for now i am just using alt/az tracking with no guiding and shorter subs.

[LewisM]

Geez Wayne, we did the same targets on the same night (though I also did NGC 3324, M83 and M20). Saturday was a cracker of a night!

[LewisM]

Here's my Cent-A from Saturday - it is THE FIRST image I took with a CCD

20 minutes total (4 subs). No darks, flats or bias subtracted at all (the SXVR-M25C is renowned for not requiring darks, and VERY low thermal noise), but will do a redux with flats and bias removed. Cropped in PS5.1, and slight stretch and a sharpen. My focus is off (I hate focusing CCD systems )

Was AMAZED hwo bright it was on the first FTS that popped on the screen. I did do the whoop-a$$ dance