I have found this object really tricky to image, this is my best effort so far and not that good, I guess a quarter moon is a no-no for this one as it is faint. I stacked 24*4 mins (got half histogram approx) at iso 1600 and still have not got enough signal. This was with the 135mm lens at f8 and my tracking and focus were both a bit off. MMmm got lots of excuses, looking for practical advice, is it down to my poor prctices or the moon/light polution. Other than going to a dark site what can I do to get a better result?
Yes I did Darks, my flats turned out to be unusable (hence a few donuts are visible). The reason was the sky shot I used for the flat was not as flat as I thought and if I use them I get a background gradient introduced. I could open up the lens a little say f5.6 would be ok but I think at f4 I will get some bad SA however that would only mean I could reduce the exposure time (and hence trcking issues) - it would not do anything to reduce the impact of skyglow would it?
I re-processed with a bit of NR in NeatImage - better but you can see I have had to push to hard...not sure what is causing the purple glow to creep in - light polution or something else....
Thanks for the feedback guys, I guess I need a dark site and no moon to get a better go at this with an unmodded camera - here is another view this time through the little WO66....
The second version looks great to me. I'd love to see what you could do on a new moon!
