M81 with STC-7

Discussion in 'My Astrophotos' started by Doug, Apr 5, 2021.

  1. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    Ceravolo 300 Astrograph, AP1600 mount, RGB + Ha. Total of 10 hours exposure over two nights (I went seriously overboard on Ha - just set it going and went to bed!).

    M81RGBHa.jpg
     
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  2. Tim Povlick

    Tim Povlick Cyanogen Customer

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    Well done Doug! This is an amazing image as one can see areas of nebulosity.

    Is the h-Alpha channel able to pick out this nebulosity from the galaxy?
    What length exposure was h-a taken at?

    Tim
     
  3. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    There's a little over 5 hours of h-alpha. Not that I really needed that much... I just set it to continuously take exposures and went to bed. It was in part a test of the new and improved auto shutdown feature of MaxIm DL.

    You can see the H-II regions in the red channel, but Ha really makes them pop.
     
  4. Tim Povlick

    Tim Povlick Cyanogen Customer

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    That is a lot of hA time. Curious how long was a single frame of hA?
     
  5. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    Since it was running unguided I was doing 60 second exposures. Probably could have done longer but it was working well so I left it.

    I actually had a guide camera on the piggyback FSQ-106... but the focus motor gadget died on me. And the FSQ has a notoriously huge temperature coefficient, so it really needed focusing!
     
  6. Tim Povlick

    Tim Povlick Cyanogen Customer

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    Excellent results especially at 60 seconds.

    Thank you for the details.
     
  7. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    These cameras have crazy low read noise.
     
  8. Tim Povlick

    Tim Povlick Cyanogen Customer

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  9. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    I decided to try some more aggressive processing.

    M81.jpg
     
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