First clear night in over a week. So, I decided to have a look at M13 Globular Cluster in Hercules, M57 Ring Nebula, M16 The Eagle Nebula, IC 4665 open cluster and NGC 6905 planetary nebula (Blue Flash Nebula) in Delphinus. Then, what the hell, a galaxy, NGC 5985 (Trio) in Draco!
Ok, so these were intentions. But, pretty much carried out. Here are the best:
Now, problems. First, cheap laser collimator decided to do the dying swan, so it took ages to get the reflector collimated, (light kept fading). Then, I was all set, I decided that the wobbles I had the last time I tried imaging were due to the scope being too well balanced. I tried un balancing it a little, but it made little difference. Reading up after, I think I am just trying to be too ambitious, now that I have the intervalometer that lets me SET but not take smoothly 3 minute exposures. The advice is to make the scope slightly mirror heavy, but get it balanced on the other axis. Then , 30 second exposures are about the limit without guiding.
So, shopping list is a Skywatcher 80ED Evostar plus QHY5 II guider! Need to save the pennies.
Trying to process the images is very frustrating. I keep on trying to use DSS but it is a sod. It does not seem ot like much in the way of images. Certainly it does not like DNG files. So, exporting out of Lightroom as TIFF seems to be better ( other wide DSS says there are no stars!). I still seem ot have more success mucking them up in Lightroom plus Photoshop than in DSS. Defintiely work in progress.
Things I have forgotten. I didn't think the mount had found the Eagle nebula, so only took the one shot, then went elsewhere. When I 'processed' ( = murdered) it in Lightroom, this is what I had ( the lower left is from Google for comparison!!!:
Ok, so these were intentions. But, pretty much carried out. Here are the best:
Now, problems. First, cheap laser collimator decided to do the dying swan, so it took ages to get the reflector collimated, (light kept fading). Then, I was all set, I decided that the wobbles I had the last time I tried imaging were due to the scope being too well balanced. I tried un balancing it a little, but it made little difference. Reading up after, I think I am just trying to be too ambitious, now that I have the intervalometer that lets me SET but not take smoothly 3 minute exposures. The advice is to make the scope slightly mirror heavy, but get it balanced on the other axis. Then , 30 second exposures are about the limit without guiding.
So, shopping list is a Skywatcher 80ED Evostar plus QHY5 II guider! Need to save the pennies.
Trying to process the images is very frustrating. I keep on trying to use DSS but it is a sod. It does not seem ot like much in the way of images. Certainly it does not like DNG files. So, exporting out of Lightroom as TIFF seems to be better ( other wide DSS says there are no stars!). I still seem ot have more success mucking them up in Lightroom plus Photoshop than in DSS. Defintiely work in progress.
Things I have forgotten. I didn't think the mount had found the Eagle nebula, so only took the one shot, then went elsewhere. When I 'processed' ( = murdered) it in Lightroom, this is what I had ( the lower left is from Google for comparison!!!:
So, using a filter, taking several exposures, stopping the mount from trailing and I will be there with a decent picture!
Anyway, in future, note to self:
1. Buy a new collimator
2. Make sure scope is slightly mirror heavy
3. Find out how to use the Celestron Polar Align tool (makes a difference apparently, over just using a polarscope)
4. Add a third calibration star across the ecliptic from the other two.
5. Possibly take the mount apart and try hypertuning it ( = could wreck it though??)
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