Quick Horse Head in Ha

[pluto (Hugh)]

Still getting to know my new RC6. Had another go at collimation and got it a bit closer. This is 2x5min + 12x10min Ha taken from heavily light polluted skies in the middle of Sydney (wtf was that giant spot light shining up from the city all last night..!?), needs lots more data.

The stars are still a bit soft although my focus was dead on (according to my Bahtinov mask) so I'm pretty sure it's my guiding. I see an OAG in my future...

RC6 / Atik 314L+ / EQ6

EDIT: I've reprocessed the pic and fixed most of the black rings around the small stars as mentioned by Cam.

[LightningNZ (Cam)]

Looks pretty good to me! Are the very dark rings around some of the smaller stars due to diffraction or over-sharpening?

The spotlight would be because of the Navy, no doubt.

Cheers,
Cam

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

Really nice image Hugh, looks nice stars are only a little out.

Carl

[pluto (Hugh)]

Originally Posted by LightningNZ

Looks pretty good to me! Are the very dark rings around some of the smaller stars due to diffraction or over-sharpening?

The spotlight would be because of the Navy, no doubt.

Cheers,
Cam

Cheers Cam, yeah that's from me being lazy and not correctly masking out those smaller stars when doing the deconvolution in StarTools. I'll have another look at that!

EDIT: I've fixed it up a bit and updated the pic

Originally Posted by carlstronomy

Really nice image Hugh, looks nice stars are only a little out.
Carl

Thanks Carl, getting there

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Incredible amount of detail.

[nebulosity. (Jo)]

Beauty

[Lee]

Very nice.... These little RC's punch above their weight by the looks....

[alistairsam]

Looks superb Hugh
The collimation looks good.
I'm not entirely sure if the oag would help cause your stars are pretty round and small but worth a try.

Cheers
Alistair

[batema (Mark)]

Very nice indeed. Well done.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Very nice close up. Smooth.

[RickS (Rick)]

Nicely done, Hugh! You've captured some subtle details there.

[pluto (Hugh)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Incredible amount of detail.

Thanks Kevin, I've done some pretty serious noise reduction on this so with some more data and dark skies (or HEAPS more data and my city skies) there's plenty more detail to be had with this setup.

Originally Posted by nebulosity.

Beauty

Cheers Jo

Originally Posted by Lee

Very nice.... These little RC's punch above their weight by the looks....

Thanks Lee.
I agree and it's certainly got more to give when I get everything working together.

Originally Posted by alistairsam

Looks superb Hugh
The collimation looks good.
I'm not entirely sure if the oag would help cause your stars are pretty round and small but worth a try.

Cheers
Alistair

Thanks Alistair, I think the collimation is still a tiny bit off but I'll worry about that when the guiding's sorted. PHD was showing about a 0.25 to 0.5 pixel error on the guide camera and that would scale to at least a pixel on the imaging camera. The oscillations were on both RA and DEC so at least the stars are still round but there's definitely improvement to be had there.

Originally Posted by batema

Very nice indeed. Well done.

Cheers Mark!

Originally Posted by multiweb

Very nice close up. Smooth.

Thanks Marc

Originally Posted by RickS

Nicely done, Hugh! You've captured some subtle details there.

Thanks Rick, glad you like!

[MGTechDVP (Mariusz)]

This image look almost as good as a image I saw of the horse head taken in IR with the Hubble. That image is fantastic, I'm jelous.

[Rex]

very nice!!! image scale is superb.