Omega Centauri

[Marko of Oz (Mark)]

Summer is almost a no go for anything astrophotography related in Tasmania. This is seriously my first opportunity to image since early December due to work, weather and short nights. And while conditions were far from ideal I felt the need to share something.

I could only manage 50, 30 second shots, processed in Deepsky Stacker and Startools. No calibration frames.

thanks for looking.

Mark

[RyanJones]

Well captured Mark. Globular clusters are amazing objects. Sadly during processing or file compression your stars have turned square Without zooming in though it’s a beautiful shot.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Mark,
Nice image of Omega with limited data , my second favourite glob , 47 Tuc is my favourite
The reason for blocky stars “may” also be a sampling issue where the light is only falling on a few pixels ?
What camera are you using and your scopes focal length ?
You possibly may be too under sampled ?
Cheers
Martin

[Marko of Oz (Mark)]

Thanks for the comments.

I'm just using the gear in my signature Martin. It loses a lot compressing to jpg but I'm not going for perfection, I'm good with presentable.

cheers

Mark

[Mickoid (Michael)]

That's right Mark, if you're happy with it then that's what's important to you. Thanks for sharing. Pixel peeping a low resolution .jpeg will reveal all sorts of artifacts. Martin may be right in the possibility that the squarish stars may be an image scale/ pixel size artifact but zooming in at a 200kb image file will always reveal the worst. The main thing is you finally had the opportunity to get out under clear skies and shoot something. Omega Centauri always looks good. Nice shot!

[Startrek (Martin)]

Mark,
It’s good just to get out and do some imaging again I suppose
Been a lousy 6 months on the south east coast of NSW
Only about 10 or 12 nights in 6 months or so
Oh and your image scale is fine at around 1.4 arc sec per pixel
So a bit of file compression, limited data / SNR and ordinary seeing conditions with those stars
Martin

[Anth10 (Anthony M)]

Very presentable Mark.
Super Glob - always an eyecatcher
Anthony