M16 from BSG (with poor guiding)

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Hi all

Just a quick M16 in 7nm Ha from Wednesday evening at Border Stargaze. Seeing was a bit woeful as the sky came and went behind moist cloud layers all night. I had my guiding set too agressively, I think, and was chasing the seeing. Most of my 15 subs were junk. Anyway - came out OK I guess for less than 30 minutes of useful data collection.

Tak FS-102, SBIG ST-8i and 2" Baader 7nm Ha filter.

EDIT: Added false-colour red using Noel Carboni's "BW - Ha False Colour Black Space" Photoshop action.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Chris,

Man, that's smooth as. Don't worry about chasing the seeing, we all saw how badly the stars were hopping about. Whilst trying to focus at 200% in LiveView on Canopus, I just couldn't believe how erratic the seeing was.

Now, add some colour to it, stat!

Regards,
Humayun

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Cheers mate

Yep - SII and OIII coming..... lots to image this month!

[AlexN]

Looks sweet mate.. As H said, very smooth indeed...

I'm hoping to catch 6~10x 20min Ha subs to add to my 2hrs of colour data on M16 over the coming weeks... Should make it very nice if my Ha data turns out like yours!!

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice Chris. What were the length of your subs to make up the 30 min?

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Thanks Alex - I'm keen to see what you get!

Paul - I actually made a mistake - it's 20 minutes' worth only. I had a pile of 5-minute subs, of which nearly all were ruined by poor guiding. They were 'orrible! LOL! So... 4 x 5min.

[Hagar (Doug)]

It has come up well Chris, nice and smooth, will make a nice base for some RGB. Considering the seeing on Wednesday night I am very surprised. At least you had guiding. I forgot to start mine on Wednesday.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Looks pretty good to me Chris, stars look tight, so guiding must have been half OK ;-) Good detail as well, especially for only 30 minutes. Keen to see the rest of the data assembled into a final image

Dave

[atalas]

Hi Chris

Nice work !

[spacezebra (Petra)]

HI Chris

I see what you mean about the black and white images! Brilliant work Chris.

Cheers Petra d.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Thanks Doug, Dave, Louie and Petra

Room for improvement, for sure, but not bad for that Wednesday night. I'm now trying to resurrect some of the bad subs and see if I can use part of a few or them.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

I've just added a false colour red version using Boel Carboni's "BW - Ha False Colour Black Space" Photoshop action. Kinda neat

[AlexN]

Looks cool Chris.. Could do with a bit more magenta behind the pillars, but for a quick caboni action its come up nice.. gives you an idea of what you could do if you had RGB filters to go with your Ha!

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Nice job Chris, the B&W look s always a winner with me!

Getting your setting right in autoguiding is critical in windy and/or poor seeing conditions. Also adjusting x and y speed/agressiveness indipendantly is most useful. After a few years now I find I can get really good autoguiding even in windy conditions and poor seeing just by setting the x & y speeds correctly to match the conditions:

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike20...aging_at_kurri

This image was taken in very bad seeing and very high winds, only careful adjustments of the autoguiding settings allowed this:

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/witchhead

Learn your mounts characteristics in different conditions and you will not regret it

Nice M16

Mike

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Thanks Alex I've replaced the red one with another version which is better I think. More subtle.

Mike - thanks for the advice I'm back in the spirit of the thing now and want to do more. Question for you - can you use AstroArt to guide with an external guide camera?

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

can you use AstroArt to guide with an external guide camera?

Yes