M-20 - Trifid Nebula, power issues, neighbors & DSS trouble

[Star Rider]

Well the clouds finally parted in San Diego on the weekend so I set up in the back yard for some sky time Sunday night. I have only had 2 chances to run my new SSAG since I got it a month ago on the CGEM so I was looking forward to getting that dialed in as well. Went by OPT on Saturday and picked up a new goodie for the E/S 127 APO, I have been looking for a FF/FR for some time for this scope and they had a used Televue .8X Reducer RFL-4087 for the TV102 and TV102iis - OPT Telescopes with the 2" nose piece & Canon "T Ring" for $250. I grabbed it! It takes the scope down to a F/5.9 from an F/7.5.

So I'm all set up and aligned by 8:30 and the neighbors turned on EVERY light in their back yard just as I got set up...ARGH! So being the good neighbor that I am, I invited the over to look through the scope for a bit (with the motive to ask nicely to turn off their lights) and it worked. They left at 9:30 and lights out at 9:35. So now I can get down to business. Set up the remaining gear, camera, SSAG, computer, dew strap, etc. By now it's 10:45 and I'm ready, took 10 Darks for processing while getting set up. Made the first run at M-101 and got 15 shots @ 4 1/2 minutes each. I learned something about PHD...Calibrate before engaging the imaging camera, I ruined 2 shots while it calibrated. Got really good clear shots with no trailing. Next was M-20, slewed around to the south started shooting before calibrating and ruined 2 more shots. I have this figured out now, PHD moves the scope to check star movement prior to guiding...I got it. I shot 10 shots of M-20 @ ISO 1600, ruined 2 due to PHD and me, and then the Power Tank went DEAD!!! ARGH!!! All the slewing around with the neighbors drained the tank 4 hours earlier. It's 2:30 and I'm done.

The next morning is when I discovered my errors with PHD so I dumped the bad shots from M-101 and started stacking with DSS. I could not come to terms with DSS or at least get anything I could work with out of it. Again, I'm sure it's a me thing and I will keep at it. I was using 10 darks, 10 bias/offset and 13 lights. No love from DSS. I had the same story for M-20. So I used the software that came with my Canon T3i and gussied up one RAW file of M-20 and have attached it here.

The Televue FF/FR worked great on the 127. I will do a more complete review of it after I have used it a couple more times. For those of you using the E/S 127 APO, this is the ONLY FF/FR that I have found that will work due to the limited amount of back focus on this scope and I have tried the William Optic adjustable version without success.

Clear Skies,
Bob



Remember, this is only one un-stacked shot.

[fogfire]

My back yard faces the fronts of 5 houses some of which light the front like a prison. Maybe I will ask them over fro Venus transit or something to make them better aware of their nasty light pollution.

[whitenerj]

Nice shot of M20. Was that a 4.5 minute shot? Do you know what your PHD graph looked like when guiding? I'm curious of your numbers on PHD.

[jenniferchristine]

You gussied up the shot but lost half the info -
When you get the tif into photoshop (or whatever prog you are using), go to levels and taking each colour individually, slide the dark cutoff up to theleft side of the histogram being careful not to cut off anything of the dark portion.
You'll find that your pic is actually quite good - you appear to have cut off quite a bit of blue and green, without attacking the red which is theproblem- so that when I tried to cut off the red, it left a colourless pic (jpg is like that anyway)

[budman1961]

You gussied up the shot but lost half the info -
When you get the tif into photoshop (or whatever prog you are using), go to levels and taking each colour individually, slide the dark cutoff up to theleft side of the histogram being careful not to cut off anything of the dark portion.
You'll find that your pic is actually quite good - you appear to have cut off quite a bit of blue and green, without attacking the red which is theproblem- so that when I tried to cut off the red, it left a colourless pic (jpg is like that anyway)

Jenn said "gussied up".....it was worth the repost just to bring that up! Follow her advice, she seldom leads peeps down the wrong trail.....gussied-up......she kills me!

All the respect Jenn!

Andy

[Star Rider]

Andy & Jenn,
Thanks for your comments, but as I said in the post;"this is one shot, processed with the software that came with my Canon camera". I have to try again with DSS to get some useable data from it. DSS and I were at war with each other when I was stacking. This post was more of looking at the tracking aspect and I think I'm getting my arms around PHD and my SSAG. I processed the picture on my lunch break at work the other day. I do appreciate Jenn's comments as she has a good eye and is very experienced in her processing skills, I read her comments often. When I have a chance to dig into this one I will post another for closer review and comments. And I still have all the origional files to work with. It will give me something to do next week while I recover from surgery.

Clear Skies,
Bob

[jenniferchristine]

There is a tool called Zoom Browser that came with your camera
It has levels and curves in it - it is a really good quick tool to play with a RAW file.
Open a raw file then pick "Display original Image" (this opens a tif that you can adjust)
Then pick edit -
Then adjust colour brightness option
Then go to the white box marked adjust colour and drop down the menu.
In there is levels and curves and brightness/contrast- the levels and the curves can be further broken down to green red blue for individual tweaks.
Back in the edit box is trim, sharpness as well so you can really do most stuff that photoshop can do and do it to a raw pic - which will be saved as a tif.

[AstroSmitty]

There is a tool called Zoom Browser that came with your camera
It has levels and curves in it - it is a really good quick tool to play with a RAW file.
Open a raw file then pick "Display original Image" (this opens a tif that you can adjust)
Then pick edit -
Then adjust colour brightness option
Then go to the white box marked adjust colour and drop down the menu.
In there is levels and curves and brightness/contrast- the levels and the curves can be further broken down to green red blue for individual tweaks.
Back in the edit box is trim, sharpness as well so you can really do most stuff that photoshop can do and do it to a raw pic - which will be saved as a tif.

This is great info Jenn. I didn't know Zoom Browser had this capability.