Mike Lewis
Staff Member
So an 8 day trip (4 days of which were driving) down to extreme Southern AZ where my astro gear is situated finally did pay off. I got both my existing refractor based setup back online, and also (after some last minute heroics performed by Dean at Starizona in Tucson) my Edge 9.25 SCT OTA setup through initial checkout as well. I also was able to meet a number of the Sonoran Desert Astro Imaging (SDAI) group in person, some of whom were instrumental in getting my problems all sorted out. All in all a great trip.
I have since managed a night of data collection back here in CO running the 4 inch refractor setup with my new QHY268M camera. I can already tell that camera is going to be amazing, with less noise, more sensitivity, and more dynamic range than my ASI1600 I have used for over 5 years now.
My first target is going to be Sharpless 2-115, one of the myriad of really cool targets in the Cygnus area. I so far have only 2+ hours of total data, but I couldn't resist a quick combine, stretch, star removal, and some noise reduction of the Hα data and I can tell there is quite a lot of interesting detail to hopefully pull out of this faint object. My hope is to get somewhere between 10 and 20 hours on this, and given the faintness of the OIII and SII contributions I may need to really go deep on those 2 channels. But here is a teaser of this cool area of the sky, only in Hα, and only 48 minutes worth. My stretching and noise reduction has been very heavy handed here, mostly due to the small amount of data and the desire to just see what details were lurking below the 'surface', without any regard for much else. Hopefully for the final image I will have enough data that both the stretching and the NR can be a bit more moderate. Still, quite exciting to see what is in view in this area of the sky.
The small circular area that shows up just below the middle of the frame is Sh2-116. Originally thought to be a planetary nebula but eventually just discovered to be another area of nebulosity not associated with the burnout of a star.
I hope to be posting this as a completed image once I am able to gather all the required frames and then remember how I used to process this stuff
ML
I have since managed a night of data collection back here in CO running the 4 inch refractor setup with my new QHY268M camera. I can already tell that camera is going to be amazing, with less noise, more sensitivity, and more dynamic range than my ASI1600 I have used for over 5 years now.
My first target is going to be Sharpless 2-115, one of the myriad of really cool targets in the Cygnus area. I so far have only 2+ hours of total data, but I couldn't resist a quick combine, stretch, star removal, and some noise reduction of the Hα data and I can tell there is quite a lot of interesting detail to hopefully pull out of this faint object. My hope is to get somewhere between 10 and 20 hours on this, and given the faintness of the OIII and SII contributions I may need to really go deep on those 2 channels. But here is a teaser of this cool area of the sky, only in Hα, and only 48 minutes worth. My stretching and noise reduction has been very heavy handed here, mostly due to the small amount of data and the desire to just see what details were lurking below the 'surface', without any regard for much else. Hopefully for the final image I will have enough data that both the stretching and the NR can be a bit more moderate. Still, quite exciting to see what is in view in this area of the sky.
The small circular area that shows up just below the middle of the frame is Sh2-116. Originally thought to be a planetary nebula but eventually just discovered to be another area of nebulosity not associated with the burnout of a star.
I hope to be posting this as a completed image once I am able to gather all the required frames and then remember how I used to process this stuff
ML
