As I am interested in viewing images taken by members in light-polluted sites, I make my first image contribution to IceinSpace. This image was taken from Heidelberg, a northern suburb of Melbourne, on May 9th 2013 using an SBIG ST-8300M camera on a 250-mm f/6 Newtonian telescope.
Total exposure of 2hr 48m in L RGB Ha in the ratio of 48:24:24:24:48 (min) Processed in CCDStack and Photoshop with the appropriate dark,bias and flatfield master frames. Both a full size frame and a cropped frame are attached.
I tried to image M83 last night and it took me 3 hours just to find it.
It was a full moon and there were hardly any stars in the sky to guide me.
When I managed to finally find it, I had trouble guiding and could not image it before it was too low to the horizon.
Hi Bob, Laurie, Allan and Rod, Thanks for your encouraging comments. As this system is an f/6 one, I have not used a coma corrector. If it was operating at f/4 then a corrector would be advisable. Later in the month when the Moon is closer to new, I hope to get more data. Regards; Arthur
Hi John, well done in finding M 83 during the full Moon. Chances of getting data in RGBL is not good, and as you said guiding was difficult. I would wait for a week or so and start imaging just after dark. Hopefully the weather will cooperate better than it has of late here in Melbourne. Cheers Arthur
