Orpington Astronomical Society

Astronomy => Astrophotography => Topic started by: MarkS on Apr 18, 2010, 19:45:36

Title: Leo Triplet colour Canon 350D on Tak Esilon 180ED
Post by: MarkS on Apr 18, 2010, 19:45:36
Leo Triplet from last night (Sat 17 April) at Kelling Heath - (title in the Subject line, apologies to Space Dog!)

27 * 5min at ISO 800 modified Canon EOS 350D on Tak Epsilon 180ED (500mm focal length at F2.8 ) + Baader IR/UV filter
10 darks and 30 flats also used.

This is an unscaled crop of the image:
(http://www.markshelley.co.uk/webdisk/LeoTriplet17042010.jpg)

Guiding with the QHY5 on the recently slackened EQ6 was the best I've ever seen.

Mark
Title: Re: Leo Triplet colour Canon 350D on Tak Esilon 180ED
Post by: Fay on Apr 19, 2010, 14:36:39
Gosh, Mark, that is really good, great colours , nice framing & good stars. I really like the lower left galaxy
Title: Re: Leo Triplet colour Canon 350D on Tak Esilon 180ED
Post by: Rocket Pooch on Apr 19, 2010, 16:12:24
Thats nice, heres my attempt, I need to do it on a monitor not the laptop http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2727/4534450595_29a74ee554_o.jpg
Title: Re: Leo Triplet colour Canon 350D on Tak Esilon 180ED
Post by: JohnP on Apr 19, 2010, 17:15:25
Excellent Mark - that is looking very good - loads of core detail in all three galaxies & great colours. Nice to get RGB showing in the diffraction spikes as well..

John
Title: Re: Leo Triplet colour Canon 350D on Tak Esilon 180ED
Post by: RobertM on Apr 19, 2010, 18:34:55
That looks lovely Mark.  Being picky, I think you could possibly sharpen it a tad to bring out more detail.

Robert
Title: Re: Leo Triplet colour Canon 350D on Tak Esilon 180ED
Post by: MarkS on Apr 19, 2010, 22:02:11
Quote from: Space Dog
Thats nice, heres my attempt, I need to do it on a monitor not the laptop http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2727/4534450595_29a74ee554_o.jpg

A very interesting comparison.  Yours is a dedicated camera on a slowish scope.  Mine is a DSLR on a very fast scope.  What was your total exposure in each channel?  Mine was 27 x 5min i.e. 135 minutes in total

Quote from: RobertM
Being picky, I think you could possibly sharpen it a tad to bring out more detail.

Interesting you should say that - I've already sharpened this as much as I dare.  I'm beginning to wonder if the DSLR's Bayer matrix might ultimately be a limiting factor when it comes to sharpness because to convert the RAW image to RGB, an awful lot of interpolation (i.e. data smearing) is taking place which doesn't happen with a dedicated astro-CCD.

I need to design an experiment to test this.

Mark
Title: Re: Leo Triplet colour Canon 350D on Tak Esilon 180ED
Post by: Rocket Pooch on Apr 19, 2010, 22:07:26
100L 30 RGB total 190 min...