13 million years ago...

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

In a galaxy far far away, the photons from galaxy NGC4945 started their long journey only to pass through a small ED100 lens and end up on a Pentax K-5 sensor. I bet the photons are thinking to themselves, "we traveled for 13 million light years to end up like this?"

212 x 1 minute subs, manually guided because PHD wouldn't track. Or I used the wrong settings or something.

Full frame at astrobin. http://astrob.in/108273/0/

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

Your photo is very very beautiful. Lack a bit of graphic processing. See it attached:

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Jorge, how on Earth did you do that? Can you show me please?

[5ash (Philip)]

Hi Kevin ,
Lovely picture with nice colours , did you manually guide using PHD?
Such a long time to manually guide!
Philip

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Thanks Philip. Yes manually guided with PHD using the grid overlay. I was getting calibration errors and wasted an hour before I gave up and went manual. I've had it guiding before, I'm not sure what went wrong this time. Star didn't move enough during calibration error.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Good one Kevin!

I read you had calibration error in PHD.
This is probably due to being closer to SCP.

Once you open up PHD click on the brain, and set calibration steps to 1500 to 2000, this should fix the problem, it's normally set to 750
If this is the problem.

Cheers,

Justin

[alpal]

212 exposures = 1/14.6 of the noise - nicely done.

cheers
Allan

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

When the original has much signal... the processing isn't difficult.

I used Photoshop CS3 and Fitswork 4. And was done with many use (and abuse) of mask ressource to isolate the area of process, sharp, brightness, contrast, legacy contrast, surface blur, noise reduction in Photoshop, and noise reduction wave let in Fitswork.

At this weekend I will try write and publish in my site a kind of tuturial about this work. Step by step, with photos to show the improvement of each step. I tell you when it is ready.

But the great tip to these procedures you can find in turorial area of Ken Crawford: http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/

I let of to be blind after read, see, and repeat again and again up to understand each procedure.

-----

About the guinding error in PHD, I agree with Justin. Some positions of the OTA can need more intensity of movement to execute the calibration. Exactly as some times you need more agressiveness to performe a good guinding. It is normal.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Thanks Justin. Yeah it's a step error, as in didn't move enough. I think I have it sorted as it was working okay again tonight.

Thanks Allan. I'm aiming for longer subs eventually when the bugs get ironed out.

Jorge, that would be great if you could write up the process. But keep it easy to follow as I'm as thick as a brick.

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

Kevin, I haven't english to write a tutorial, Despite it... it was done !
http://jsmastronomy.30143.n7.nabble....k-4-td259.html

At least, I tried !

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Thanks very much Jorge! Leave it up for a while so I can study it when I get time.