M20 Last night with QHY8

[Hagar (Doug)]

A cropped and combined image of M20.
Telescope: Takahashi FS102
Camera: QHY8 CCD
Combined: 20 X 180sec + 1 X 900 sec
No calibration at all. No noise reduction.
Processed using: IP and CS2

[iceman (Mike)]

That's a ripper, Doug! Why no flats?

[Hagar (Doug)]

Originally Posted by iceman

That's a ripper, Doug! Why no flats?

Calibration files seem to cause me no end of grief. I will have to sit down and work through these problems but at the moment I am just trying to work out the basic camera and processing. Getting there I think.

[Ric]

A lovely image Doug, you have brought out some nice colour in the nebula and the stars look great.

Cheers

[sheeny (Al)]

Beautiful!

Al.

[gbeal]

Might be time to look at building a light box Doug. I did, and it certainly simplifies flats no end.
I have read (somewhere) that the histogram for your flats with the QHY8 needs to look similar to the histogram from your subs. Whether this makes sense or not. In the past with the likes of the ST2000 I always aimed for the ADU count to be about 1/3 of the full well?
Someone way more knowledgeable here will make better sense of this.
It is a great image, and apart from the fact you said you didn't shoot any flats I would not have known.
Gary

[bluescope]

Nice image Doug. How much of a crop is it compared to original ?

[Hagar (Doug)]

Originally Posted by bluescope

Nice image Doug. How much of a crop is it compared to original ?

Thanks everyone for the comments. It is about a 2:1 crop.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Yeh, nice Doug I like the diffraction spikes on this one.

Mike

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Looks good Doug. Well done.