I used a home made astrograph for capturing the image and a QHY8 camera. A total of 3 hours in 5 minute subs. Processed with free software only (mainly IRIS and Gimp).
I wonder whether I went too far with the colour saturation?
That's a fine image Stefan, lovely and deep with plenty going on and the colours are great. I wouldn't worry about them being too saturated at all, just getting any colour in this region other than blue is no mean feat, so well done
Funny, I was only just surfing the VIC astro society web site today and was looking at some of your work on there, very nice.
Thanks everyone for the replies and comments. Looks like all I need to do is control the noise a bit better and call it done. I only used the free version of Noiseware for that.
Jo, the astrograph is a small Companar: D=132mm F=330mm (f/2.5).
It may be the only one of its type in existence as it is too complex and difficult to make as a commercial proposition.
Stefan
Last edited by Stefan Buda; 06-01-2014 at 07:08 PM.
Reason: Dropped an o.
Great shot Stefan, even if the image is a bit too small to full appreciate it. It would be great if you could post a link to a larger resolution image uploaded somewhere (Astrobin? Pbase? Flickr?..).
My compliments also for the use of a homemade telescope, I also would love to see some images of it, always curious to see new gears in particular if they are unusual..
Rick, you are right about the central obstruction: It is 61%, making the effective f-ratio close to f/3.
Marco, rather than showing you a boring black tube, here's an image with all the structural elements before anodising. As you can see it is all made of aluminium, which is not good for keeping focus, but I had no choice due to the complexity of the design.
I had several goes at uploading a larger version of the Witch Head into my ASV gallery. There seems to be a limit on the vertical size of the images so I ended up rotating it 90 degrees but even so it is not much better than the one here.
Thanks everyone for the replies and comments. Looks like all I need to do is control the noise a bit better and call it done. I only used the free version of Noiseware for that.
Jo, the astrograph is a small Companar: D=132mm F=330mm (f/2.5).
It may be the only one of its type in existence as it is too complex and difficult to make as a commercial proposition.
Rick, you are right about the central obstruction: It is 61%, making the effective f-ratio close to f/3.
Marco, rather than showing you a boring black tube, here's an image with all the structural elements before anodising. As you can see it is all made of aluminium, which is not good for keeping focus, but I had no choice due to the complexity of the design.
I had several goes at uploading a larger version of the Witch Head into my ASV gallery. There seems to be a limit on the vertical size of the images so I ended up rotating it 90 degrees but even so it is not much better than the one here.
Congrats again Stefan, you deserve all my admiration for being able to both excel in making AND using your imaging gears! It looks an interesting design, I remember long ago (film era) with a friend we tried to make a houghton camera 500/4 but eventually it turned out so complicated that we never managed to get satisfactory images out of it.. kudos to you!
Marco, It's interesting that you started imaging in the film era too. Back then I made a small Schmidt Camera that worked exceptionally well but soon after I finished it, film went out of fashion and I turned to planetary imaging only, until recently. The poor SC has been in retirement inside a cardboard box ever since...
I'm itching to know some more details on the scope 
