Lobster Nebula

[RyanJones]

Hi All,

This is a project I’ve been working on for the last couple of months. In total its an integration of nearly 20hrs of data. Taken from my Bortle 8 backyard. During the last session I had the opportunity to try out the latest Asiair update which has multi star guiding. Previously I was guiding between 0.6-0.7” with occasional runs as low as 0.5” so I wasn’t expecting any huge gains and to be fair my seeing and scope resolution wouldn’t allow me to see any difference anyway. For the record though it took my guiding down to consistently betweeen 0.45 and 0.55. It generally seemed smoother too. This was also my first attempt at a starless image.

So here it is:

232 x 300sec subs
ZWO 071mc Pro @ gain 200
200mm f/4 GSO Newtonian
HEQ5 Pro
STC Duo Filter

Hi Res : https://www.astrobin.com/full/14mu4n...nes&real=&mod=

Thanks for looking

Ryan

[Zuts]

Hi, that's a heap of details and I think worth every minute of such a long exposure.

I generally always remove the stars as part of my PixInsight processing. This allows me to bring out the finer details of the nebulosity without damaging the Star Colours. Once I am happy with the nebulosity I just use pixelmaths to add the stars back in.

[RyanJones]

Thanks Zuts,

I actually wanted to put the stars back in this one but I couldn’t work out how to do it in photoshop after I’d cropped and rotated the original. I probably need to set it up at the start for putting them back at the end. Ideally I’d have liked to get RGB stars and put them in. All a learning process. Either way I was happy with how this one came out.

Cheers

Ryan

[Startrek (Martin)]

Ryan,
Wow what an image and what an effort to capture and process it
Well done !!
Although I do prefer stars in images , this starless stuff doesn’t do anything for me but that’s just my taste ( Science over Art )
I found Multistar guiding great but it has its limits , if seeing is crap , Multistar guiding can’t really guide you out of unstable atmosphere, your still going to “chase the seeing” . I tried it last night with and without under ordinary conditions and MS guiding only helped a little in patches over 3 hours compared to SS guiding ( graph still see sawing as guide was Star jumping all over the place )
I even swapped from the Hysterisis to the PPEC algorithm and again only minor benefit if any
The atmosphere is always the winner every time.
Martin

[RyanJones]

Thank you Martin.

I’m totally with you in the multistar guiding. I can see it being quite helpful to refine guiding with certain setups and maybe it could have saved me the multitude of hours I’ve spent already refining my setup to get to where I am. Beyond that though as you said, once you’re guiding below your image scale and the limits of seeing there really isn’t much gain to be had. It does maybe encourage me to give my 9.25 another run with a guide scope rather than OAG which I’m not really setup for yet.

Cheers

Ryan