Flat field issues solved

I am still in the early stages of getting used to the new set up. With the old system I attatched the field flattener and DSLR and the correct ccd to lens distance was achieved instantly giving full flat frames. The same applied to the FLT110 and the DSLR good round stars to the edge of the field but with the Starlight express camera elongation of the edge of frame stars was noticable. I downloaded CCD inspector to examine the field.

As you can see a clear problem. I didnt have any m48 spacers, thankfully Andrew ( a fellow blogger and member of BAS) has lent me some. A few combinations later and 35mm worth of spacing has produced a much more pleasing result. Good focus and FWHM figures from centre to edge.

 

 This process was done late evening after returning from the observatory at Great Ellingham. I wanted to give it a test run on a subject until the rise of the comets. I ended with a nice result from 12 x 10 minute exposures on the enigmatic M42. A DDP stretch and saturation gave a good sharp result with lovely structure to the wisps of nebolosity. Guiding was sub pixel accurate.

Comet Fever

Comet fever is sweeping the globe, as we anticipate the arrival of comet Ison. I imaged Ison on the 13th at 05.00. I estimated the magnitude at approx 7.5 still just beyond visual limits. A few cloudy early mornings later it appears we have some excitement. As I write this there are posts on facebook claiming he is upto 5.5 and withing viusal limits. The dawn sky was lightening at pace as I tried 3 minute exposures with the Sxv M25. I also captured comet Lovejoy higher in the sky and captured earlier starting at 02.30. These images were produced by the comet stacking and star blurring in Deep Sky Stacker. A strange result with no elongated stars at all ??? I tried with the 3rd method of what would be double processing on the comet then the stars and recombining the to give a sharp core and stars image. This worked but I lost all the colour????. If you looka carefully there is some structure in the tail of Ison.
I wanted to post something from what was an all night session. I will have another go with them and also want to create an animation for them both too. Watch this space.

         Comet C/2012 S1) Ison                                                                                                                 Comet C/2013 R1) Lovejoy

5 hours processed M81,M82

I am getting to grips with the Starlight Express camera from using the DSLR. This is the first time I have captured 5 hours worth of data. Registered in Maxim DL and processed in Images plus. (Pixinsight trial ended the other day). I know I will revit the processing workflow for this one but here it is at present.

B33 Dark Nebula. The Horsehead.

I have been using Maxim to calibrate the files as I was struggling with Pixinsight batch preprocessing. I am very pleased with the detail in the flame nebula.

 

2 hours worth of data here. still not happy with the gradient in the centre.