M83 Comparison

bloodhound31 · #1 30-04-2008, 10:39 AM

About a month ago, I spotted this little beauty and thought I would have a crack at it. I got 34 minutes at ISO 1600 and was faily impressed.

Last night the mercury plummeted to minus 2 degrees celcius so I donned the extra four layers of clobber and headed back out into the dome.

I had left the camera on the scope in the same orientation as a month ago so it would all stack neatly and proceeded to capture another hour of exposure at ISO 800.

Using Deep Sky Stacker, I stacked both sessions together for a total of 1hour 34 minutes. Here is the comparitive result.

All images taken with an unmodified Canon 400D on a Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS, focal reduced to F6.3. Guided manually via piggybacked Skywatcher ED 80 and Modified ToUcam.

Thanks for looking!

Baz.

http://i26.tinypic.com/ang6s3.jpg
http://i26.tinypic.com/20fb0ci.jpg

renormalised (Carl) · #2 30-04-2008, 11:11 AM

Both of them a really good. Your second try shows a bit more detail, but there's a hint more colour in the first pic.

Ric · #3 30-04-2008, 11:44 AM

Great looking images Baz, both show good detail.

Cheers

Lester · #4 30-04-2008, 01:26 PM

Good images Baz. Extra time capturing is time well spent.

EzyStyles (Eric) · #5 30-04-2008, 01:52 PM

a good improvement baz. abit more details than the previous attempt. keep at it.

Zuts · #6 30-04-2008, 10:17 PM

Hi Baz,

Looking good with more data, some of the structures are looking very nicely defined. My only other comment is that it seems to be missing some reds in the nebulosity, not sure why these are missing.

Paul

bloodhound31 · #7 30-04-2008, 11:09 PM

Thanks Lester, Ric, Eric and Paul.

Paul, the missing colours are just my own fiddling with levels. The standard filter in my 400D thends to the red side a bit too much so I think I overcompensate sometimes by going the other way with the levels...I'll have a bit more of a muck around with it.

Baz.

AlexN · #8 30-04-2008, 11:56 PM

Its amazing sometimes how much of a difference longer exposures can make. I suppose its the same as how much better visual astronomy is after you've exposed your eyes to darkness for a while...

Nice shots, I like both of them, and tend to lean towards the 1.5hr exposure both due to detail and the difference in color (however you cant trust my eyes, I'm colorblind...)

jase (Jason) · #9 01-05-2008, 08:12 AM

Not a bad effort Baz. Manual guiding - you're a sucker for punishment. I think the colours need some work, but you've collected some good detail. Well done.