My 2nd photo attempt with my scope. I saw a couple of other pictures of this recently so I got keen and went out into the 4 degree (and dropping) night and gave it a go. After about 4 hours setting up and figuring out how to use some new softwares I took this 5min exposure. Then setup to snap several more to stack them and went inside. Came back 30min later to find battery in camera had gone flat. d'oh! One more thing learnt...
A question - Why are my bright stars so large in diameter? Is this normal for a CMOS camera?
Some info on equipment used -
LX200 10" Classic with Canon 450D.
Guided with Celestron Omni XLT 127 (SCT) hung on the back of LX200 with losmandy rails and quick release type mount with Orion SS Autoguider and PHD.
Image adjusted with MaxIM DL. Tripod aligned with Alignmaster (sweet).
Great shot Mark for a second image! You should be happy with that. The stars are a bit blown out. There are post processing techniques that can reduce the size of them (in photoshop you can use layers or pre set tools such as carboni reduce star size). The stars are not perfectly round, (but pretty close). This will add to the star size. Good stacking and guiding will keep stars tighter. Also, when you stretched the image to bring out the nebula you probably have enlarged the stars also. Once again, there are techniques to stretch the nebula but not the stars. A good book is Photoshop Astronomy by Scott Ireland.
Keep up the good work though!
Very nice start to your imaging. I would have been out of my tree had I got this quality with my second image considering it is just a single image. The stars are a little bloated but this can be one of the tradeoffs with a SCT without a reducer/corrector. As paul has suggested there are corrections which can be made but initially get focus perfect and master your capture and setup then delve into the complexities of complex tasks like making stars smaller.
Well done for 2nd try,
Most beginners start with m42 or eta Carina as they are brighter objects, and do so for months before moving on to tougher stuff. You would find the initial results would then give you more data to work with. Cracker effort though .
Ahhh, all good info for me. And yes, I did start with M42. It was a December I think at the end of 2008. Here is my 3 x 5min exposure of it. Did not know much about collimation then. And with the M16 I forgot again that it all moves with a SCT. Have to re-focus and check collimation as I move it across the sky...
