NGC 5128 taken at Snake Valley Astro camp on Saturday night.
The image details:
Camera: QHY9 mono with Baader LRGB filters. Thanks Theo.
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ 106ED at F5
10 X 10minute Lum frames binned 1 x 1
5 each RGB 10 minute frames binned 2 x 2
all images calibrated with a very small set of calibration files.
I initially thought the night was going to be a non event because I couldn't get my guider going. I rebuilt the laptop a while back and must have forgotten to install the guider drivers. Took a while for the penny to drop but when it did it was a relatively easy task to get it all working.
This is one of the results.
The first image is a full frame and the second is a crop of the galaxy.
I love how there's subtle diffraction spikes on the big stars in the crop. Even refractors have spikes, yay. : )
I reckon you could probably crank up the sharpening on the dust lanes in the galaxy proper, mask it subtley; they will really pop. Particularly as a soft light layer but pull the opacity right back to around 33%, or overlay at around 25%
Not bad Doug, maybe a bit brown looking though, some blue needed perhaps..? and I agree with Humi some sharpening might look good on the main galaxy too but then you were going fiddle with it anyway huh?
Thanks for the comments guy's. I enjoyed this camp immencely, a great step back from work and some quick mages having not done very much in the last few months while building observatories and fighting rain off. Amazing how much you forget.
Great result Doug considering you thought it wasn't going to happen!
I've done exactly the same thing many times after replacing parts and formatting machines.... you get all exited as the night looks great then hit something and wham.... nada.... then you work out you forgot to load ASCOM or you didn't have the latest update or something or other.. generally these nights are dedicated to problem solving and nothing gets done...
Tend to agree with H and Mike, needs some more blue channel,... looks a little brown in my monitor.
All in all though, there's some nice detail showing especially for your aperture.
I think also the focus or the seeing was a bit soft this night. If you haven't already, get yourself a motorised focuser... I believe from comments from Greg Bradley and others, these scopes are notorious for needing to be tweaked as the night wears on.
But truly, these are lovely scopes, bet you love it!!
Amazing the amount of detail picked up by the little scope. Great images.
Regards
Keith
Thanks Kieth, This scope is really a keeper and produces great detail all the time. Focus is it's biggest bug bear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mill
Doug i saw this image on your laptop and it looked a lot better than here with the jpeg compression
Thanks Martin, I would like to be able to blame the compression but it is probably the fact that I had to reprocess it as I didn't save the version at Snake Valley.
Quote:
Originally Posted by richardo
Great result Doug considering you thought it wasn't going to happen!
I've done exactly the same thing many times after replacing parts and formatting machines.... you get all exited as the night looks great then hit something and wham.... nada.... then you work out you forgot to load ASCOM or you didn't have the latest update or something or other.. generally these nights are dedicated to problem solving and nothing gets done...
Tend to agree with H and Mike, needs some more blue channel,... looks a little brown in my monitor.
All in all though, there's some nice detail showing especially for your aperture.
I think also the focus or the seeing was a bit soft this night. If you haven't already, get yourself a motorised focuser... I believe from comments from Greg Bradley and others, these scopes are notorious for needing to be tweaked as the night wears on.
But truly, these are lovely scopes, bet you love it!!
All the best
Rich
Thanks Rich, I have a Robofocus fitted to the scope and was a little surprised that the focus shift during the session was very small for once.
I have included a repro with a bit more blue to see if it looks a bit better. I think I am going blind quickly these days. Fine detail and colour is getting harder.
