The Eagle and the Swan (well, almost)

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Folks, just a couple more test images from the other night, even though my exposures were only batches of 15s subs, I was still gobsmacked by what was captured, especially with the Eagle.

Looking forward to snapping them from a dark site, and getting much more data, as you can see there is quite a bit of noise in there and I've no doubt overcooked it

Anyhow...

M16 Eagle Nebula - 40x 15s ISO3200 (5 seconds between subs)...the noise is noticeably worse than the ISO1600 shots I've taken before, but I hadn't expected the detail to materialise quite so easily from Sydney

M17 Swan / Omega Nebula - 60x 15s ISO1600

Both taken with a C8 Edge HD at ~f/7 (0.7x reducer) with a Canon 1100D on EQ6.

Question... how long should I leave the camera "to cool" after each sub? I'm assuming this becomes more of a problem with longer subs too? (which is why folks end up with cooled CCD cameras!)

[Dealy (Kev)]

G'day Dunk,

I use a 1000D, which is very similar to your 1100D, and have found ISO800 to give the best results regarding noise.

Normally I take 300sec subs and give it 10secs between shots, I guess the longer cool down the better. I just chose 10secs because I read it somewhere but haven't experimented for myself. Doubling it to 20secs only lengthens the imaging session by 10mins so I should try it.

M16 looks promising - I must have a go at it when the wind dies down a bit.

Kev

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Looks good there Dunk. M16 could probably do with more subs.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

My mission: to get longer and more subs, and from somewhere dark

Doesn't look like it'll be over the next few days though