QHY8L First Light - Omega Centauri

[cybereye (Mario)]

Hello everyone!

Well after 2 weeks of patience, I've managed to get first light with my QHY8L. I decided to image Omega Centauri because it was something that I could easily find and knew what it should look like!

Anyway, this image is a combination of 29x30s and 7x60s subs and guiding with PHD. I also took darks and flats to round of the evening! However, I have yet to attach my MPCC so there is coma present.

Any comments gratefully accepted.

Cheers,
Mario

[Hagar (Doug)]

Very nice first light Mario. You have some lovely star colour and a core which appears as separate stars. Well done. Get your MPCC going at this setup will be a killer.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Great shot, Mario

Really good first light....you want to make a list of targets to do.

[Logieberra (Logan)]

Nice start Mario. Good to see what the QHY can produce. I also had data to share from my 'first light' QHY8Pro... until my netbook hard drive died

[atalas]

Congrats on first light Mario and nice image too.

[gregbradley]

That's a great first light and as you say the MPCC should clean up the small amount of coma. Tracking is good and nice star colours.

Greg.

[peeb61 (Paul)]

Nice one Mario,
This is the camera I have been looking at, I shall watch and learn from you.

Paul

[RobF (Rob)]

Great going Mario. I honestly think the Newts are overlooked way to often as imaging scopes. You're WAY ahead of any of my first efforts and many others I suspect with that one

How are you focusing at the moment?

[Octane (Humayun)]

Mario,

Well done!

Have you got the drift alignment steps all memorised now?

H

[cybereye (Mario)]

Thanks everybody for your comments regarding my first light. The QHY8L is certainly a step up from the DSLR and I'm finding that I can push the image more than I used to be able to. I've attached a newer version where I've increased the vibrancy of the image. I'm pretty confident I've kept the star colours close to my original version. One thing for certain is that this now looks like a swarm of bees!!

Originally Posted by Octane

Mario,


Have you got the drift alignment steps all memorised now?

H

Octane, this image almost didn't happen because I tried to take a short-cut with alignment. I spent an hour trying to get PHD to guide properly because I thought I was "near enough". I decided to pack it all in only to give drift aligning one more go. Turns out I was way off! I then drift aligned properly, re-connected everything and started imaging. PHD worked a treat this time!!

Originally Posted by RobF

Great going Mario. I honestly think the Newts are overlooked way to often as imaging scopes. You're WAY ahead of any of my first efforts and many others I suspect with that one

How are you focusing at the moment?

Rob, I quite like my newt - the focal length is a nice mid ground for imaging. Unfortunately the wind was gusting last night and most of my subs of 1 minute or greater had to be trashed. That's when I wished I had a small scope rather than the "spinnaker"!! As for focusing I use a Bahtinov mask and live view in Ezcap. It was so simple compared to my Pentax that didn't have live view!!!

Cheers,
Mario

[mill (Martin)]

Looking good Mario.
Use more subs, about 60X1minute and you can stretch it more and get more stars showing and maybe galactic dust.

[cybereye (Mario)]

Originally Posted by mill

Looking good Mario.
Use more subs, about 60X1minute and you can stretch it more and get more stars showing and maybe galactic dust.

I tried, but that darn gusting wind! Maybe next time when it's calmer...

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

The wind last two nights was a killer - but you got a good result with that cluster - shows what can be done with short exposures - I expect to see it on the wall of the SAS meeting this month!