M20 Qhy8 Zs105

[Astrod00d]

I had a bit of a go at M20 the other night, basically to test the QHY8 on the Zenithstar 105.

Levels, curves, noise reduction and saturation in Photoshop.
I need to add darks and flats at some stage, but for a 'test' image I think it came out rather nicely.

Cheers,

Rob

[AlexN]

Niiiice!! the color is outstanding! was the tracking/guiding slightly too fast/slow? seems that the smaller stars are streaked just a touch.

Not withstanding that, Its a killer M20!! I'd be wrapped!

Alex

[Gama]

Originally Posted by Astrod00d

I had a bit of a go .......

A bit ??, more like a bleading lot !.

Looks good, great color, which means your going to get a heap of questions from others how you did it..

Theo.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

The colour balance (aaarg NOT COLOUR BALANCE AGAIN!!!!....) looks pretty well spot on in my opinion.

Very nice image

Mike

[Alchemy (Clive)]

looks good, the blue stars are more pronounced than usual... i presume the 105 is almost APO but not quite...... it actually looks quite pleasing in this image. Very nice.

[skeltz (Rob)]

Nice image,...tracking...guiding?hey who cares its great for a test image!

[Astrod00d]

Originally Posted by AlexN

Niiiice!! the color is outstanding! was the tracking/guiding slightly too fast/slow? seems that the smaller stars are streaked just a touch.

Alex

The image was a stack of 4x300s subs. On close inspection one sub shows trails. I've tagged the bad sub and I'll re-process one cloudy evening. Thanks for pointing it out, I hadn't noticed!

Originally Posted by Alchemy

looks good, the blue stars are more pronounced than usual... i presume the 105 is almost APO but not quite...... it actually looks quite pleasing in this image. Very nice.

Yep, the Zenithstar 105 is more like a semi-APO. It is better than my ED80 in all respects (resolution, field flatness, vignetting) except for that blue colour correction.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

The colour balance (aaarg NOT COLOUR BALANCE AGAIN!!!!....) looks pretty well spot on in my opinion.

Very nice image

Mike

Thanks Mike! All the debayering and stacking was done using Deep Sky Stacker with the built-in setting for QHY8 selected. DSS does a great job of debayering. Then a bit of stretching and noise reduction in Photoshop, then stretched the blue a little more using curves. Not sure if the 'colour balance' is true to life, but it's pleasing to the eye and that's important when you're doing it for fun!


Cheers,

Rob

[Ric]

Lovely image Rob, always a lovely DSO to test new equipment on.

Th colours and hues are very nice.

Cheers

[Antu]

Excellent image ! Very clear and pleasant colors. Thanks for sharing !

[ozstockman (Mike)]

Originally Posted by Astrod00d

All the debayering and stacking was done using Deep Sky Stacker with the built-in setting for QHY8 selected. DSS does a great job of debayering.

You've found these settings for QHY8 in DSS too. I guess it's much better than debayer in MaximDL :-) I did not even know DSS has such a settings until I read some post about it on a qhyccd forum.

Great image! I hope I'll be able to do something like this with my ZenithStar ED80 and QHY8 soon. Just need to wait for already ordered dew controller and heaters to be delivered.


cheers,

Mike