Test Shot of the Orion Nebula
19-Sep-2015
My original target was the Helix Nebula, but after spending most of Saturday night trying to work out how to use off axis guiding, I gave up and noticed Orion was rising. A nice bright target to use the drift aligned mount on.
I've been waiting too long for a proper astronomical camera. After being messed around with by Atik and my local suppliers, I ordered a QSI 683wsg direct from the factory. It cost less than the prices here and only took 2 weeks to get to me from placing the order to having it in my hands Mississippi to Brisbane Australia.
After processing the photos, I must say I'm impressed with my first attempt at using the QSI. I'm looking forward to more practice with it once I crack the off axis guiding.
Image:
- 90x 6s luminance
- 30x 6s red
- 30x 6s green
- 30x 6s blue
- 51x 10s luminance
- 16x 10s red
- 16x 10s green
- 16x 10s blue
- 40x flats
- 37x darks
- 120x bias
Hardware:
- Celestron EdgeHD 1100 with CGEM DX mount
- Celestron 0.7x EdgeHD focal reducer
- QSI 683wsg Imager @ -15°C unguided
- Astronomik LRGB Typ 2c filter set
Location:
- Orange Zone near Brisbane, Australia.
- September 19th 2015 3:55am-6:07am.
- Seeing: Average-Poor.
Software:
- Captured with AstroArt 5.0
- Image evaluation and rejection with CCCInspector 2.5.3 (FWHM < 4", Aspect < 30%)
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, combine LRGB, levels
- Paint Shop Pro X: Shrink stars
- Astra Image 4.0: Mitchell resize 150%, Lucy Richardson deconvolution, denoise, Bicubic resize 60%