First in a while..

[JohnP]

Whilst you were all boozing it up & DSC I spent sometime sorting out my hard-disks etc. I happened across the images I took down at Les Granges with Fay, Chris & Jim in 2008 & decided to have a quick look at the Ha I took of the Horsehead for comparison with my image the opther day. I did a quick stack & stretch, upscaled image 200% in PS & a few little tweaks & then resized to 1024 (remember size of my CCD is 640 X 480) so upscaling image shows all the warts & noise. Have to say I am pretty gobsmacked - Unbelievable how much easier good clean data is to process. This image was taken with my entry level 16ic & cheapo ZS66....

Bloody hell I want to go to Les Granges again !!!!!!!!!

[MarkS]

John,

The Les Granges version looks even more like the Hale Telescope image! 
Plus, it's facing the right way 

Mark

[JohnP]

Cheers Mark - Makes me think imaging in Bromley is not really worth the effort even with NB filters... I need to move... (just have to convince wife & kids).

John.

PS - from this day forward my horseheads will always face LEFT...!

[mickw]

That really is a good result John

[JohnP]

Thks Mick - reckon once you moved to your nice dark skies you should be able to get better with your kit... John

[RobertM]

That's very nice John.

Makes me think imaging in Bromley is not really worth the effort even with NB filters

Get 5nm/3nm filters or even better a remote setup down at Ollys if you want colour   Persuading the wife to move to a dark site might not be an easy option especially your's has an affinity to shopping like mine does

[mickw]

has an affinity to shopping like mine does

Ashford has loads of nice shops 

[RobertM]

has an affinity to shopping like mine does

Ashford has loads of nice shops 

Don't worry, she does know that

[Fay]

Gosh John, that is good! my M31 was only 8x300 from there, no darks or flats!!!!!!!!!! I did about 5 images in a night there! because they were so short, none of this 10 hour malarkey

[JohnP]

Thks Fay - My horsehead was also only 16 X 5mins No flats & darks (don't even think I knew what a flat was then...) - It is amazing how easy it is to process good data. Only took me 5 mins to process (& its not because of any new skills I have) - not the normal 6 hrs I spend on an image...

Ohhh for good skies....