Pleiades with Newtonian

cataclysm · Post by **cataclysm** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:36 am

Oh boy! Finally imaged something after a long dry spell. This was my first serious attempt to image with the 8" newtonian. The real surprise was the camera actually captured faint nebulosity on Merope & Maia. I thought this was a long shot because the air glow was pretty severe.

Here is the image & equipments info:

Orion Optics f/4.5 8" Newtonian with Baader MPCC
50mm Mini Borg as guide scope
Canon 350D
Meade DSI Pro as guide Camera
Losmandy GM8 Mount
Hutech IDAS LPS filter
12x180s @ ISO 800
20X120S @ ISO800

Post by **perseid** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:03 pm

Very nice.

The processing is just nice to bring out the nebulousity while preserving the colour of the stars. And the stars are sharp till the edge. (although you may have crop the image a bit)

Did you add an extra 'spider' for the extra diffraction spikes?

Post by **weixing** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:29 pm

Hi,
Very nice...

Did you add an extra 'spider' for the extra diffraction spikes?

I think that is cause by the mirror clip.

Have a nice day.

Dragon Man · Post by **Dragon Man** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:21 pm

That is quite a nice image : )

It must be frustrating still getting noise in the image even after stacking 32 frames!!!
I'd say it is from the heat where you are located. Pity you can't cool the camera.

Your guiding looks perfect, and the wispy nebula shows up nicely.
Well done!!!

Clifford60 · Post by **Clifford60** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:21 pm

Great pic

Dragon Man · Post by **Dragon Man** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:41 pm

Cataclysm, I hope you don't mind but I took a crop of your image and ran it through a noise elimination program to see how much noise I could remove for you.

It took most of it.

If you want to get the program to help with noise removal it is called 'Imagenomic Noiseware Professional'.

Cataclysms image with noise removal:

cataclysm · Post by **cataclysm** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:45 am

The processing is just nice to bring out the nebulousity while preserving the colour of the stars. And the stars are sharp till the edge. (although you may have crop the image a bit)

Hi Perseid, thanks for you kind compliment. The image was not crop, the Baader MPCC does a great job at correcting coma.

Did you add an extra 'spider' for the extra diffraction spikes?

I think that is cause by the mirror clip.

I am not so sure if the extra diffraction spikes were caused by the main mirror clips, because there are only 3 clips instead of 4, and they don't line up perpendicular to spider. I guess they were just secondary reflections.

cataclysm · Post by **cataclysm** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:51 am

Cataclysm, I hope you don't mind but I took a crop of your image and ran it through a noise elimination program to see how much noise I could remove for you.

It took most of it.

If you want to get the program to help with noise removal it is called 'Imagenomic Noiseware Professional'

Hi Dragon Man! Wow, your software works very well, thanks for the help. And welcome to Singastro. [smilie=hi.gif]

Post by **rcj** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:49 am

Hi Kelvin!!

Good to see you are back to imaging once again! Quick! Do some more work with the Baby Q!! <wide smile>

zackae · Post by **zackae** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 10:54 pm

I think it's just me but the stars really look like they were twinkling. Nice nebulosity too!