Omega Centauri and Jewel Box

snas (Stuart) · #1 29-06-2009, 11:40 AM

We had our group's viewing night on June 16, a beautifully clear,
cold night; must have almost been below 10 degrees

Anyway, I took my laptop, LX90 8" and canon 400d with me and set up and managed to get a couple of shots of Omega Centauri and Jewel Box. My main aim for the night was to try and get M104, but as you will see, while my go to for viewing might have been pretty good, with the reduced field on the camera view my targets we just a bit towards the bottom. When I went to M104 I suspect it may have been just off the bottom of the picture and I was unable to get it where I wanted it.
Omega Centuari is 13 x 15 second exposures with the 400D at prime focus, aligned and stacked and initial processing in Images Plus, then finished off in PS.
Jewel Box is as for Omega Centauri.
I also used Alpha Crux as a target bright star to use IP's focussing
program on. It certainly helped with my focussing although I'm not sure I got it right. I might chuck that photo in too just as a curiosity.

Still a long way to go, but I'm slowly getting there.

http://tinyurl.com/knhd76

Regards

Stuart

Hagar (Doug) · #2 29-06-2009, 02:30 PM

Nice image but it would be better if the framing was a little more central. It's a big learning curve but good fun getting each step a bit better. Try using dark frame subtraction to reduce the noise and remove the amp glow in the bottom right corner.

Keep at it.

telecasterguru (Frank) · #3 29-06-2009, 09:39 PM

Stuart,
You're well on the way but centreing the images would help. Pretty well focused but now time to move to longer subs. The more data the better.

Frank

snas (Stuart) · #4 02-07-2009, 12:02 PM

Doug and Frank

Thanks for your commenst and suggestions. The framing obviously a problem but easily rectified. The darks....yep, quite right I didn't get any darks that night. It was a pretty cool night and we have a cold change due through here in the next 24hrs so maybe I might get out and do some darks and redo with those. I know I have long way to go, but it's a great feeling to see your photos come together, particularly given that my first attempt at Omega Centauri was almost unrecognisable.

regards
Stuart