Rosette N & Whirlpool Galaxy Short Exposures

[umasscrew39]

I re-arranged my observatory setup a bit by piggybacking my 80mm APO Triplet Stellarvue on top of my C11" EdgeHD. Not an easy chore working over 12 ft above the observatory floor on a safety ladder. This way I can get many narrow and wide FOVs based on scope and camera combinations. It is much easier for me this way than changing my C11 to use the hyperstar lens. In addition, I experimented taking images with the 80mm but using the OAG on the C11 to guide. It worked like a charm.

The Rosette N is ideal for the 80mm and I could have used the reducer to capture more of it. The Whirlpool is really too small for the 80mm and will be done with the C11 but I was anxious to try it on a galaxy. Besides the use of the C11 OAG to guide the 80mm, I am also still amazed by the image quality of the ASI533MC Pro after short exposures. In addition, the sky conditions were not great: Bortle 6 with below average transparency and seeing
OK- so Orlando is not as bad as Long Island, Minos (LOL!!!) but still not great at the moment.

Both DSOs were captured using 120s exposures with a camera gain of 200 and offset of 10. Temp set at -10. I used the Minos technique once again, that is, I captured a stack of 3 and then saved and exported them for pre- and post-processing using PixInsight. Rosette was a total of 90 minutes and the Whirlpool just under 30 minutes.

Bruce

Rosette Nebula final.jpg (693.57 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

M51.jpg (65.73 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

[turfpit]

Very good Rosette Bruce.

Dave

[mAnKiNd]

Very cool!

[umasscrew39]

Thanks guys. Frankly, I was more impressed with the Whirlpool Galaxy given only 30 minutes under not so great skies. I expected to see nothing but this camera is excellent and is a perfect match for the 80mm. Of course, the Whirlpool needs to be imaged with the C11" EdgeHD for a better FOV but I was curious to keep trying the 80mm.

I decided to cancel my ASI2600MC Pro order and I ordered a QHY128C. I hope it lives up to all of the good reviews and it works properly on SharpCap. It should arrive by the end of this week. The plan is to use this larger sensor on my C11 at f/7 and eventually at f/4 when the Starizona .4x Night Owl reducer for the Edge version comes out (I'm still on the waitlist).

[nexusjeep]

Nice images M51 is impressive for 30 minutes optimistically it looks like we might actually have a clear sky on Sunday.

Cheers
Nick

[umasscrew39]

Thanks much, Nick.

I look forward to seeing more of your ASI2600MC images. This seems like a very nice camera with the same newer technology as the 533MC which I have and is excellent. Like I said before, I decided to go full frame instead of getting the ASI2600MC, so I hope I did not make a mistake.