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Here is first light with the SXVF-H9C, a new (used) camera I was able to purchase. This is 40x360" through the ED80 with the WO 0.8x II ff/fr, guided on the Tak EM-10 through an AT66ED and the DSI Pro with PHD. Nebulosity 2.0 was used for capture, and Nebulosity, Photoshop CS3, and Maxim DL were used for processing.Actually, 6-minute subs were not long enough to capture what I could of this, so when I finished processing, I did some more stretching to see what I missed. Here is a B&W that tells me some of what to look for next time:
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2 comments:
Nice image, Val! I imagine that M101 is pretty tough to image, even under the best of circumstances. I've contemplated it, but I don't think I can get as much detail as you've gotten here. Have you tried adjusting the curves in successive layers, and then masking out the brighter sections to highlight the details from the lower layers?
Many thanks, Rory. Even in the stretched six-minute subs, only the center of the galaxy and the brighter parts of the arms appear. I'm operating at about f/6, though. In the Epsilon, you should be able to use far shorter subs.
I processed this by doing essentially that, adjusting the curve for different parts of the image differently. The problem with going deeper in the data is that there is no deeper. Anything dimmer in this image just isn't worth seeing. It's too noisy. Part of my problem surely is the method of pre-processing. For instance, in this first image with this camera, I subtracted darks rather than bad pixels, and that added some noise. Also, this was processed as a color photo rather than as three raw sets. I suspect I'd have more control if I were saving in another format.
Either way, I've learned some, and next time I'll try something else. I've only seen M101 through a telescope once or twice, and then only with very dark skies, so this is more or less a great advance in observation for me.
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