I had a day off yesterday and took full advantage of the clear skies. There was some scattered cloud hanging around but they cleared long before I started imaging. The Moon luckily didn't cause any problems so I was very happy. The seeing conditions were terrible but stayed fairly steady during the night.
This is my very first image of a Galaxy so I am extremely pleased with it. The only real problem I had during the capture was not being able to locate a suitable guidestar. It took me a good 30 minutes or more to find one. It frustrated me to the point I almost packed everything up.
I decided to not use ICNR darks but instead take seperate darks after aquiring the lights allowing me to capture more lights.
The real success is that I got PHD all working properly. Thanks to changing one setting on the mount.
Details are as follows,
Celestron 8" SCT f/6.3 1260mm fl on EQ6 Pro
Guided with 70mm refractor, DMK21 and PHD
Canon 450D
10 x 5 minute subs at ISO 800
Darks, Offset/Bias & Flats subtracted
Stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS3.
Matt, you have done very well to produce this fine portrait of NGC253. I have tidied up some of the (slightly trailed) field stars to make them round, which improves the overall appearance I think.
Great effort Matty, especially for a first attempt at such an object, I know the frustration you go through if one can't find a guide star in certain areas of the sky, I have been there many times, well done indeed.
Matt, you have done very well to produce this fine portrait of NGC253. I have tidied up some of the (slightly trailed) field stars to make them round, which improves the overall appearance I think.
Cheers
Dennis
Thanks Dennis,
Yes, it does really help to have round stars. I reason they are slightly elongated is probably because during capture the galaxy was closer to the edge of the frame instead of being in the centre.
Great effort Matty, especially for a first attempt at such an object, I know the frustration you go through if one can't find a guide star in certain areas of the sky, I have been there many times, well done indeed.
Leon
Thanks Leon,
It was just one of those days. One day no matter where you point the guidescope you will find a guidestar. Any other day it will take you forever to find one and no matter how hard you try, you wont be able to find one. It is just how it goes.
Thanks Dennis,
Another thing, how did you make the stars round?
Hi Matt
I found a free Photoshop plug in just yesterday. Here is the link to the website, although some of the links seem to be broken.
The plug in is at the bottom, called "Star Rounder.8bf".
I noticed that it did some undesirable things to the galaxy so I used the CS3 Lasso tool to select the galaxy and did an “inverse select” which is why the stars in front of NGC253 were not rounded.
Great job there! I did took one 20 minute shot of NGC 253 last night too on a C9 -> Canon 400D - I think yours looks better than mine! Yep getting a guide star was pretty challenging on this one. Great processing of a faint subject!
Great work Matty.
What was that one setting on the mount you had to change ?
Hi Leinad,
All I did was change the slew rate to 1. I read about it in a previous thread in the equipment section and to my surprise, it has actually fixed the problem that I had been having.
Hi Matty,
What a great first effort.
Have you had the 450D modified.
I am thinking about a digital SLR, maybe a 450D. I have no experience at all with digital SLR astrophotography.
Does the live image come up on the LCD display?
From a brief look through this forum it seems modified cameras are the go but what can be done with an out of the box camera such as the 450D?
My First Galaxy - NGC 253 Sculpter Galaxy
One day no matter where you point the guidescope you will find a guidestar. Any other day it will take you forever to find one and no matter how hard you try, you wont be able to find one. It is just how it goes. 
