first light

[lesbehrens (Les)]

hi. these are my first light images through my new ed 127mm and the qhy8, guided with qhy5. stacked in dss and processed in ps.
eta Carina 4 * 10 mins
m 42 3*10 mins
ngc 5128 7* 10mins
ic434 6*10 mins
i am happy with these outcomes.
tips welcome
enjoy
Les

[multiweb (Marc)]

Hi Les, great first light. Data is very good. You went a bit overboard in the processing part with colour saturation and sharpening. All four shots show the same patterns caused by oversharpening. Other than that it's all good.

[duncan]

Hi Les,
Whilst i am not qualified to be picky these are great for First Light shots.
The second photo seems to be very noisy.
My pick is the HorseHead. What caused the halo on the brightest star to be off centre? Is it the camera being slightly tilted?
As i said i'm not qualified to judge i'm mererly being observational and asking questions.
Cheers,
Duncan

[lesbehrens (Les)]

yes its because i croped it to make it bigger. not too sure about the halo. i figure that out as i learn more about the scope and camera.
les

Originally Posted by duncan

Hi Les,
Whilst i am not qualified to be picky these are great for First Light shots.
The second photo seems to be very noisy.
My pick is the HorseHead. What caused the halo on the brightest star to be off centre? Is it the camera being slightly tilted?
As i said i'm not qualified to judge i'm mererly being observational and asking questions.
Cheers,
Duncan

[TrevorW]

Les what settings have you set for the QHY8

mine are set a 3 and 115

this seems to produce the best results for me

also don't forget bias and flat frames will make a significant differenence

[lesbehrens (Les)]

can u tell me a little more about bias and flat frames? my sttings are gain 52, ofset 114.
les

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by lesbehrens

can u tell me a little more about bias and flat frames? my sttings are gain 52, ofset 114.
les

Gain 52 is way too high. With this camera Gain 1 is fine. I use offset 60 but 110 is fine too. The issue is not with the data acquisition which is excellent, it's with the processing IMO.

[allan gould]

I use gain of 1 and offset 111 - easy to remember.
Excellent first shots you should be very pleased with them.
It takes time to get used to new scopes etc and how to process your shots.
Keep them coming
Allan

[RobF (Rob)]

Nice going Les!
What sort of 127 refractor have you bought?

[richardo (Rich)]

Hi Les, congrats on your first light with this setup...
Certainly a great start to your collection.
I tend to agree with Marc, less is best on most occasions... mind you I'm guilty of being a bit heavy handed at times.
More exposures means processing gets a little easier for great results.

Look forward to more of your images.

Rich

[Hagar (Doug)]

Hi Les, Nice collection for a first light set. I agree with Marc about the gain and offset figures you are using. Craig Stark has a good explanation of setting these settings in his documentation on Nebulosity which can be downloaded free from his site. I ran my QHY8 at gain of 1 and offset at 65. The data you have looks quite good but running too high a gain will limit your ability to maintain star colour and may oversaturate stars very quickly.
The halo on Alnitak is a reflection between the CCD and the optical window. I lessoned this a little by removing the optical window and replacing it with a UV/Ir blocking filter on the front of the camera adapter but this sometimes caused frosting of the CCD easily.

Your stars look a little bloated but may well be the result of the high gain or even a slight miss focus.

Keep at it Mate. Nice start to your imaging with your QHY8.

Well done.