December 11, 2007

M42 and a poor M51

Blimey,it was cold last night (and colder still tonight!).

Anyway, here goes:

OTA: William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD + 0.8 FR/FF
Guiding: NS8GPS @ f/10 + DSI-C + PHD
Imaging: QHY8 + MaximDL, 40 x 30s, 20 x 240s, 15 x 480s, CLS
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: ImagesPlus + PSCS2 + Noel Carboni’s AstroTools
Note #1: I left the blackpoint quite grey to show allthe dusty bits 🙂 but it also shows some of the oddities when I remove the gradient
Note #2: This damn near killed my 1Gb laptop!

Published in Practical Astronomer, February 2008

Think thats OK? Well, click >>HERE<< for the 8Mb 2886×3492 version, or clickon the image above.

This is a process straight from stacking, and I may go back and do a three layer mask version of this (on my desktop… think I`ll leave the laptop to recover)

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M51
OTA: Celestron NexStar 8 GPS @ f/7.(something)
Camera: QHY8 OSC
Guiding: William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD + DSI-C + PHD
Imaging: MaximDL/CCD, 10 x 900s, CLS Filter
Processing: DeepSkyStacker, ImagesPlus, Photoshop CS2 + Noel Carboni’s Astro Tools
Note: I didnt nail the focus on this, and it shows 🙁

Posted by under Astro | Comments (1)

1 Comment

  1. Don’t worry about M-51, it’s not easy as it looks. I did that one and you can see it on my weather page or space page. It’s over bright and a little out of focus. But the M-42 is even better then before. Notice the dark nebula around the edges of the picture. Gives it a 3-D quility tot he picture. I see the stars behind the dark nebula. There’s also allot of that stuff around M-42 & 41 you caught…

    Comment by G — December 11, 2007 @ 7:27 pm

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