So I finally got some clear skies and broke out my new mono camera. This was quite a feat as I went from Sony mirrorless A7iii and Stellarium to nearly fully automated in NINA with a new QHY183m and LRGB filters. I have been going out and setting up and practicing alignment and finding objects.
I was imaging in my backyard where there are neighbor porch lights , bortle 7-8 skies and a lot of obstruction but I can see polaris and after successful polar aligning in sharpcap I chose something high in the sky that wasn't obstructed - Pelican Nebula. So after getting everything connected and inputting my target and sequence in NINA I was able to slew and plate solve effectively. Earlier in the day I took 10, 3 minute darks at -20c. I just got a manual filter wheel and some inexpensive 1.25 LRGB filters and took 20 3 min L, 10 3 min R, 17 3 min g (I got caught in a meridian flip and lost my last 3 G so after the flip I just redid my sequence of 10 so 17), 10 3 min B. Wasn't going to wait until dawn for flats so I skipped them this time - will do in the future along with bias frames.
This is my first ever mono shoot and also first mono process. I am a total newbie at processing in general but I think the results were fair It looks like my guiding was pretty good even though the rms wasn't great and I think I came pretty close on the spacing with my flattener, wheel extension tubes and camera. Telescope is WO Z71 with 6a flattener and ZWO ASI120 mini camera on orion 50mm guidescope.
RGB with no L added
LRGB - bloating of stars
A few issues - why do my stars 'bloat' so much when add L but not in just plain RGB. It is obviously going to take some time to get used to stretching, processing and combining - this was done with DSS and Photoshop.
All things considered learning getting everything properly configured (set-up tear down every session for me) Sharpcap, NINA, Stellarium, PHD2, multiple cameras, I am glad to come away with an image but I know there is still such a long way to go. All advice , critiques, pointers welcome
Edited by Phishin_phool, 09 August 2020 - 08:51 PM.
