JewelBox not as esay as it sounds!

[Robby]

Hi all,
The NZ Astrophoto society monthly comp object this month was the Jewelbox in Crux. I thought "too easy JD", & last night expected to knock it off in a few minutes, no auto-guiding required.
While the 2nd point is true, it wasn't as easy as I thought. I mucked around for ages with the focus then trying to get the exposures right. Too long and the stars bloated out, too short & the dimmer stars dissappeared.
Ended up with an image that I am happy with, but I would have liked to go deeper.. Sometimes asthetics wins.
5x8s shots @ ISO200 + 2x16s shots @ ISO400 IR Mod 200D. C9.25 f/6.3.
Comments welcome, especially negative (just as Striker likes it )
Cheers

[fringe_dweller]

Hi Robby, the JB must be hard to get to look like the ep view, coz i seen f all that look right, yours is the closest i have seen i reckon, very xmasy too
love the colour of kappa
Well done Dude!

[Mick (Michael)]

Pretty is the word that comes to mind Robby, aesthetically pleasing image alright.

[acropolite (Phil)]

Well done Robby, nice colours, a very pretty part of the sky.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Very nice Robby.


But when did you start putting fishing line across the front of your scope? Don't tell me your thinking of getting a newt and trying out the view for size?

[matt]

Nice Rob

Looks like a Xmas card image. Awwwwwwwwww... pretty!

[Striker (Tony)]

Really nice Robby.

Have you thought of using any filters.

I hope you dont mind but I attached a image of the same area I did a month ago with much longer exposures...probably a little too long but I was able to to do this with the UHC-s filter.....

Even though my stars a little bloated with slightly less exposure time could still have been used to get that deeper image.

[Robby]

Nice one Tony. It's a hard balance with these SCT's to get nice tight stars and go deeo also! I tried combining a much longer exposure with this one, but it made it look yuck as the Mg7 & Mag9 stars ended up all the same size!

Hi Paul, I wondered if anyove would notice the spike on SCT. Used the old wrie across the primary trick the rotated the final image to make them x-y aligned. Nice effect I reckon. Gives the impression of smaller stars I reckon. Btw no thoughts of moving the the "dark side" of newts. It's dark enough in the SCT world as it is!
Thanks for all the other comments too!
Cheers

[ving (David)]

nice shots robby and tony

the wire effect is good