New Image: M44

[Jockinireland]

I'm not a huge fan of cluster images and rarely do them myself. But the last time I had my 8" Lx200 out I had terrible problems with star shapes and other things.

So I purchased and fitted a set of Bobs Knobs and a Tribahtinov Mask which is supposed to make collimation easier. But of course weather has been terrible here now for weeks. Last night was promised clear for part of the night so I decided to use it to take out the LX200 and get it set up on my Todmorden pier for galaxy season and to get the collimation fixed.

So set up and collimation went well but conditions were awful, 98% moon, high hazy cloud and fairly poor seeing. But as a test after set up I decided to try a capture of the Beehive Cluster, really because it would allow me to assess the stars.

I only got an hour of data but I'm happy with it for the star shape. Guiding was exceptionally poor (because of the seeing I guess) so bloated stars and quite hazy too. But the colours are nice and even at the hour I picked up some of the fainter background galaxies which are shown in the annotated version.

So for what its worth this is 1 hr, 8" LX200 gps, ASI2600 mc (no filters)

And annotated

[Graeme1858]

When conditions are poor it's great to do some tweaking and experimenting!

Good star colours.

Graeme

[Juno16]

Awesome image considering the conditions and in only one hour!

I really enjoy a good star cluster!

Good stars and a nice resolved background (including faint fuzzies) really help make an image pop for me these days.

I’ve been having guiding issues for the past few months and sent my guide log to the PHD forum.
Bruce responded and confirmed my poor seeing as one of my biggest issues. Also my weak guide camera (Orion SSAG) was struggling pull guide stars out of the muck.
My image scale was also too high to allow PHD2 to adequately correct.
Set up a new ASI220mm mini last night and it looks promising. Many more guide stars available (especially for multi-star guiding).
Not a big improvement in image scale but I plan to go oag soon.
Of course, like you, I’ve been struggling with weather.
Poor seeing and windy last night, but at least I got the camera focused!

Take care and very nice work!

[Jockinireland]

Awesome image considering the conditions and in only one hour!

I really enjoy a good star cluster!

Good stars and a nice resolved background (including faint fuzzies) really help make an image pop for me these days.

I’ve been having guiding issues for the past few months and sent my guide log to the PHD forum.
Bruce responded and confirmed my poor seeing as one of my biggest issues. Also my weak guide camera (Orion SSAG) was struggling pull guide stars out of the muck.
My image scale was also too high to allow PHD2 to adequately correct.
Set up a new ASI220mm mini last night and it looks promising. Many more guide stars available (especially for multi-star guiding).
Not a big improvement in image scale but I plan to go oag soon.
Of course, like you, I’ve been struggling with weather.
Poor seeing and windy last night, but at least I got the camera focused!

Take care and very nice work!

Thanks Jim, yes, it was a success just to get out and get it all working then sort out the collimation. The image was an unexpected bonus.

Could you explain about the "image scale" not allowing PHD2 to guide well. I struggle with understanding things like image scale so I wonder if thats adding to my woes with the LX200.

It was a bit breezy here last night too, and the LX200 is like a sail so that was not helping me any either.

Still, it was good to get out though it was very cold - at least by Irish standards. It really has been an awful year for AP - i do hope it turns around this year.

Take care Jim.

[Juno16]

Awesome image considering the conditions and in only one hour!

I really enjoy a good star cluster!

Good stars and a nice resolved background (including faint fuzzies) really help make an image pop for me these days.

I’ve been having guiding issues for the past few months and sent my guide log to the PHD forum.
Bruce responded and confirmed my poor seeing as one of my biggest issues. Also my weak guide camera (Orion SSAG) was struggling pull guide stars out of the muck.
My image scale was also too high to allow PHD2 to adequately correct.
Set up a new ASI220mm mini last night and it looks promising. Many more guide stars available (especially for multi-star guiding).
Not a big improvement in image scale but I plan to go oag soon.
Of course, like you, I’ve been struggling with weather.
Poor seeing and windy last night, but at least I got the camera focused!

Take care and very nice work!

Thanks Jim, yes, it was a success just to get out and get it all working then sort out the collimation. The image was an unexpected bonus.

Could you explain about the "image scale" not allowing PHD2 to guide well. I struggle with understanding things like image scale so I wonder if thats adding to my woes with the LX200.

It was a bit breezy here last night too, and the LX200 is like a sail so that was not helping me any either.

Still, it was good to get out though it was very cold - at least by Irish standards. It really has been an awful year for AP - i do hope it turns around this year.

Take care Jim.

This link should take you to the PHD2 Guiding Forum with my original message and Bruce's reply.
Makes a lot of sense. I rebuilt the DEC axis (cleaned, new bearings and grease) and now have the new guide camera which helps a little bit with the image scale (reduction). Eventually, I will go with an oag, but needed a more efficient guide camera than the Orion.

https://groups.google.com/g/open-phd-gu ... DNsGAIAgAJ

[messier 111]

very nice colors , thx .

[jthommes]

Cool image. The added bonus is the improved collimation. The stars look great - great colors. Somewhat surprising to get good color with full moon and haze.

[Tycho65]

Hi,
Just wondering, the stars look very nice and round, but I noticed the centre of the stars appear white or saturated ? Is that what is supposed to be. I thought the centre of the star should be red or blue or yellow depending on the star's spectrum and evolution.

Thanks guys.

[Jockinireland]

Hi,
Just wondering, the stars look very nice and round, but I noticed the centre of the stars appear white or saturated ? Is that what is supposed to be. I thought the centre of the star should be red or blue or yellow depending on the star's spectrum and evolution.

Thanks guys.

You are right, the cores of some of the brightest stars are blown out. I think there are several reasons for this. First, the behive cluster includes some quite bright stars so its not surprising that you get a few that are blown out in an image like this. Then, I was not really concentrating on the stretch - as I said, this was about testing to see if I'd got my collimation right and that really needed me to be able to see the stars all accross the field. At only 1 hour integration, this meant that to see the dimmer stars out from the centre I needed to stretch the image more than was good for it. If I was trying to process this as a proper, "show the stars" image I would have needed at least 4-5 hours more integration and I would have stretched much more carefully - probably using several iterations of masked stretch to keep the brightest cores from blowing out. Finally, this is a 20 + year old non-acf SCT. So the stars are just not going to be as good as , for example, a modern refractor. But for galaxy season its the only long focal length I have so I just need to make do and accept its limitations.

I hope that helps and thanks for taking the time to comment - I always appreciate it.

David

[Tycho65]

Hi David,
Thanks for such a good reply. But I am worried you say that 4-5 more hours of imaging time would be needed to “show the stars”. Is that because the faint stars need longer to get the colour data?

Thanks.
Magnus

[Ylem]

Very nice stars!

[Jockinireland]

Hi David,
Thanks for such a good reply. But I am worried you say that 4-5 more hours of imaging time would be needed to “show the stars”. Is that because the faint stars need longer to get the colour data?

Thanks.
Magnus

The more integration time the higher the SNR(Signal to noise ratio)becomes.The higher the SNR the more one is ableto pull faint detail (in this case the smaller fainter stars) out of the background noise. Essentially, the more integration, the less intrusive is the noise. As it was with this one,with only 1hr integration, to even see the fainter stars further out from the centre(which was my main goal here) required more stretch than the data could handle. If I was doing an image to show off the cluster, integration would need to be much higher. I hope that all makes sense,