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NGC6280 (Open Cluster) taken at Rothe Valley 15 Sept 2012

Started by The Thing, Sep 21, 2012, 20:00:16

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The Thing

Not sure if this is actually what it should be according to CdC as I can't make out the open cluster against the rest of the stars. I imaged the area anyway as I liked the dark nebula and the zillions of stars.

Aha! It's a galaxy according to Deep Sky Object Browser. It's the tiny orangey blob near the left edge half way up. Must be more careful selecting things in CdC!

HEQ5 Pro (recently re-greased), EQMOD, CdC, LX90 8" UHTC Baader Alan Gee II Telecompressor, Canon 350Da, NO Astronomik CLS-CCD clip filter, Lakeside ASCOM Focuser, Meade 8x50 FinderGuidescope & QHY5, PHD Guiding, APT Astro Photography Tool.

Processed in IRIS. 10 flats, 8 darks, 10 offset/bias frames. 20 x 300s (1h40m) at iso800. Stacked with sigma 1.5 with 1 iterations. Colour and dynamic stretching, wavelet sharpening and binning twicex2 (which means Mark the big version was binned x2, the small version was binned again x2 to make it smaller).

Larger Version

MarkS


Actually I quite like this.  Apart from the galaxy there's a nice variation in star colours and there are definite patches of dust.

To the best of my knowledge, this is not a area of sky that's frequently imaged!

Mark

Carole

I like it too, love the star colours and dark nebula. 
Your optics seem to have recovered Duncan, or is this a different telescope?

Carole

The Thing

Quote from: Carole on Sep 21, 2012, 23:46:02
I like it too, love the star colours and dark nebula. 
Your optics seem to have recovered Duncan, or is this a different telescope?

Carole

Thanks Carole. Same scope etc. Just have tweaked the mount for smoother guiding (lots of grease everywhere), cleaned the optics and drank a lot.

The Thing

I have solved the image in Astrometry.net. It's between Vulpecula and Albireo (which was where the scope was pointed). Center (RA, Dec):   (295.548, 27.313)


Fay

That really is very nice Duncan, great colour & lovely stars
It is healthier to be mutton dressed as lamb, than mutton dressed as mutton!

The Thing


JohnP

Yep agree with all comments Dunc. Your images have come on leaps and bounds since you 'stripped your mount...'.   Oh err Miss's

Very nice wide field.

John.

JohnP

Yep agree with all comments Dunc. Your images have come on leaps and bounds since you 'stripped your mount...'.   Oh err Miss's

Very nice wide field.

John.

mickw

This is very nice Dunc

I may be wrong (nothing new there) but you seem to be processing a lot more/better.

Is it your switch to Iris ?

Everything seems much more detailed with cracking colours
Growing Old is mandatory - Growing Up is optional

The Thing

Its IRIS. Follow Marks crib sheet and instructions for gradient removal  and you can't go too far wrong.

Jim

Really nice Duncan. Be nice to do a star count; anyone know how to do that?

MarkS

Quote from: Jim
Be nice to do a star count; anyone know how to do that?

IRIS!
On Duncan's jpg I ran:
setfindstar 1   (this recognises a star as being anything brighter than 1 std dev above the background.
followed by
findstar

It found 7,100 stars but I reckon it had still found less than half so there's at least 14,000

Duncan, if you run the commands on the original you might get a better result.

The Thing


The Thing

On the original PIC file IRIS says "Warning, too many stars"  and returns:
7572 at 1 sd
8510 at 1.5 sd
8744 at 1.75 sd
8510 at 2 sd(?)

I suspect that the dimmer stars are too close to the background level to be detected .