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Looks like the weather will take the usual turn for the worse for the New Moon..... managed 2.65 hours of integration last night with the NB filters on this target. HA and SII were 5 minute exposures, Oiii were 3 minute shots. I also have reduced my gain considerably from Unity, which appears to allow the Full Well Depth to be available for actual data. Captured with StellarMate and all processing done in PixInSight.
Used a SharpStar 61 APO with a ZWO ASI183MM Pro all siting on a old CGEM mount. Filters are Optolong. For the second time I used a different method of stretching the image in Pix, Masked Stretch seems to be a lot more tame to use than the usual stretch....
The CGEM was purchased used from a guy that did AP. I hadn't ventured into the insanity of AP yet. BUT when I did, it didn't take long to discover the backlash in the mount had to be addressed! After about a week of research and even contemplated sending it out to be hypertuned. I found a PDF from the people who I had considered sending it to. Reading, reading again then reading the instructions again I grabbed the tools I needed. It took more nerve than skill to get the backlash to a tolerable level......
As for the color(s) in the image I will not comment. AP is a bit like underwear, we all have preferences!!!! As noted in the description, this in just one short session on this target. SNR for each filter is likely different, and would improve more with time-on-target. PLUS, bloated blue stars from the Oiii filter probably isn't good either!!!
Gathered some LRGB data on this target last night. I removed the stars from the SHO image, and combined the stars (stars only) from the LRGB image, re-assembled with pixel math......
Very nice Brent!
I looks like the SNR improved with the added LRGB data.
I also have been shooting 0 gain for quite some time under my bortle 5 sky...
Larry
For visual:
10" Skywatcher collapsible goto dob, various EP's and a Celestron StarSense auto align.
For imaging:
Orion 8" astrograph 800mm @ F3.9
Eq6-R Pro controlled by APT via EQmod with an OTA mounted mini PC
Tele Vue Paracorr Type 2 coma corrector
Altair Hypercam 26C