M57 - First Try

[Ingo]

M57 is a pretty easy object to photograph, and shows pure beauty in the universe.

Meade 12" LX200
SBIG ST8 R:15s G15s B:30s

This is my first decent image, and I'm trying to learn how to process correctly in Photoshop with Luminance and RGB.

Thanks

[iceman (Mike)]

Looks good! When did you get a 12" and an sbig? Last I remember you just had the DSLR camera.

[Dennis]

Nice work Ingo. Hope to see some more from the ST8.

Cheers

Dennis

[Alchemy (Clive)]

nice ring there ingo, RGB is a lot harder than just a one shot camera, good stuff, i know were going to see more.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Quite nice there Ingo, an erie looking ring that.

The 12" LX200 is a nice scope, I remember mine fondly. Bagged several 15th mag galaxies visually from the outer suburbs of Canberra with mine, saw detail in the GRS, nailed the Red Spot Jr and split a 0.6" double. In excellent seeing and with perfect collimation side by side comparisons showed it outperformed my 6" Astrophysics Starfire APO in resolution (guess that's to be expected) - great scope! Is yours on the native fork or a GEM? When a camera is on it with the fork mount, access to the southern sky areas is limited though, big drawback . I found the Lumicon Giant Easy Guider the best focal reducer for imaging with the LX200 and great for wide field viewing too.

Cheers

Mike

[Ric]

A very nice image of M57, well done. the colour and level of detail looks spot on.

It also looks like you have some very nice new equipment as well, congratulations.

Cheers

[robgreaves]

Nice shot - caught the central star too.

It needs longer exposure than a few seconds though, to do it justice. Also - did you run a reducer on your scope? An f/10 SCT and ST8 should provide a far bigger image scale than that?

Try and crop the image and post it at 'actual pixels' (1:1) and more detail should be evident.

Regards,
Rob

[Ingo]

Thanks everyone. I couldn't get longer than 30s exposures because it was so close to the pole. Blue is not as sensitive as green and red so I had to do 15s on green and red to do 30s on blue.

[Tamtarn]

You've sure stepped up with your new equipment Ingo. Really sharp and detailed. Well done

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

You've got to be happy with that Ingo - well done!

Cheers, Marcus

[jase (Jason)]

Tough target Ingo. You've done exceptionally well. Look forward to seeing more.

[Hagar (Doug)]

Very nice Ringgo......lots of detail and a lot of colour in one so hard.