Coonabarabran adventure

[vic4loc (Victor)]

First time to Coona over the long weekend, was lucky with 2 perfect nights, the dark skies at Coona is amazing, pitch black horizon to horizon with no sky glow at all. Warrumbungle Motel was booked out so stayed at a place called Barkala Farm, about 28 km north of Coona.

All images taken with my FSQ106 at f/5, the qualities of attached jpegs are reduced to make the files smaller, so they look a bit pixalated. Also first time learning to use Pixinsight to process the images, struggling with the M31 high dynamic range.

Victor.

[jase (Jason)]

SSO open day always attracts a crowd I hear. Looks like you sure made the most of your time in Coona. Great selection of images on display. Some I think you could possibly spend more time on processing to colour balance and eek additional detail but overall a good job, especially considering you've grabbed the bull by the horns in working with PixInsight for the first time. Look forward to seeing more.

[gregbradley]

A very productive run. Some nice images there. We don't often see M31 and you got that quite well. M33 is the pick for me.

What are those galaxies in the last image?

Greg.

[RickS (Rick)]

A nice collection of images, Victor.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Very nice series of images!

[nebulosity. (Jo)]

Super set of images

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

What are those galaxies in the last image?

Greg.

You serious Greg?? ...that's the Grus Triplet/Quartet

Lovely set of showcase objects there Victor, a worthwhile trip for sure

Mike

[multiweb (Marc)]

All those pics look really good. Coona clear skies on a long new moon week-end. Hard to top this.

[vic4loc (Victor)]

Thanks all for the feedback, would love to go to Coona every new moon, just that it's 7 hrs drive from where I am

This time I went for quantity rather than quality, tried to image as many objects as I could, majority of them are the low northern horizon objects like M31, M33, M45, which I can never do in Sydney. Due to this I only collected 3x10mins or 3x5mins for each LRGB channel for each object.

Some I think you could possibly spend more time on processing to colour balance and eek additional detail but overall a good job,

Yep agreed, I think I got the data there, still trying to get my head around all the Pixinsight processing techniques, tried to use the color balance and background neutralization, but my image always go all red or green

What are those galaxies in the last image?

Greg.

As Mike already pointed out, it's the Grus quartet NGC7582, NGC7590 etc..


Victor.

[gregbradley]

As Mike already pointed out, it's the Grus quartet NGC7582, NGC7590 etc..


Victor.[/QUOTE]

Ah yes. I forgot. I've actually imaged them myself!

Greg.

[Ross G]

Hi Victor,

Great looking photos.

My favourite is M31.

Coonabarabran has the best skies.

I just got back from 5 days there.

Ross.

[White Rabbit]

Wow, great set of images you got there. You got more in one weekend than I get in a typical year.

Nice work.

[ChrisM]

Great work Victor - especially being a first timer with PI.

I was impressed with the dark skies there too, although the assigned observing field at the Mountain Motel (or whatever it was called) was far from ideal on Saturday night. However, the couple of pics that I did take using DSLR & tripod showed much more detail that I would normally see.

Chris

[astronobob (Bob)]

Wow, nice bag for the weekend Victor, very productive. I dig the horse & Plieades especially, quality captures BTW I didnt notice the pixelation much at all really, looked fine actually, nice show

[vic4loc (Victor)]

Pixinsight is an amazing piece of software Been reading and watching lots of online tutorial over the weekend.

Re-processed M31 and the result is a lot better than my first attempt I reckon. Also flipped the image around and surprisingly it's showing some depth


Victor.