M33 - Same data - New Method

Just been having a play with the M33 data that produced the post 9th October. Made some light flats using the same imaging setup and then combined with Deepskystacker.
The processing no longer required any gradient work so concentrated on producing better colour enhancing by shifting Photoshop into LAB mode. Here is a 100% crop of the same M33 stacked data.


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M33 (NGC 598) - Triangulum Galaxy

First image from new dark site in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. Half moon was elevated to about 20° which didn't help so called it a night after a couple of hours.

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8x4.5mins, ISO800 at 300mm

Raws were too cooked so won't make that mistake again.

"There's probably someone in that galaxy with a camera takin a picture of our galaxy. Rockin" - Scott Preston 09:50hrs 09-10-2008

M57 - Single Shot

This is a single frame taken from my dark site East of Leeds. The wind whipped up after this so had to abandon things. WIth lack of subs I wasn't going to post this but it turned out to be better than expected so here goes.


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1x5mins, ISO800, SkyWatcher 80ED, Canon 450D

American Nebula - again!

Another clear night for a short while and after much buggerng about with new ED80 I ended up going back to my Sigma APO instead. Windy conditions made my available sky limited so I opted for the American Nebula again. This time I took into account white balance to compensate for the Astronomik CLS filter.


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9x3mins, ISO800, 149mm, F4.6. Canon 450D + Astronomik CLS + Sigma APO 70-300mm.

Note for Will: Here are the links I mentioned. TIFF and Canon 450D RAW of one of the single unprocessed subs that went toward producing this image of the American Nebula. The cyan cast is caused by the Astronomik CLS filter.

14.56MB .CR2 version
70MB .TIFF version

Hope you have broadband!

North American Nebula (NGC7000) - Emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus

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This second shot was taken the same evening whilst I was waiting for it go dark. This is the Andromeda galaxy rising above my conifers to the East. Was primarily just testing the tracking and alignment but it turned out to be not a bad result.


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M13 - Globular cluster in the Hercules constellation

First astro shot using the Astrotrac sidereal tracker. The tracking is spot on. Unfortunately the subs were taken during the final stages of twilight when the sun was only about 15 degrees under the horizon. Not to mention a waning gibbous moon had just risen. Considering the odds were stacked against me I was more than happy with the result.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about the Astrotrac you may want to follow this link to the Astrotrac Website.

There is also a user group hosted with Yahoo groups which is attended regularly by the Astrotrac designer and manufacturer Richard Taylor. Go to the Astrotrac User group.

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6 x 2.5min subs, Canon 450D, ISO1600, 300mm (Sigma APO)