73/P Schwassmann Wachmann - Fragment C

Your not asking for much Seanie :lol:

Your not asking for much Seanie :lol:

Nope! Should be no problem to some of the astrophotographers here! Even if you didn't have the filters, I am sure it can be simulated - 3 regular photos, each passed through a 'filter' in Photoshop, and then merged...

S.

Your not asking for much Seanie :lol:

Yer not wrong there Dave.

Unfortunately with it now getting dark so late, its hard enough just to get one sequence of shots, nevermind 4!!!!

Tell you the truth, even though I know its a little less sensitive than the momochrome, I'm starting to seriously consider getting the ATIK-16HRC which is a single shot colour camera rather than the monochrome one. I just cant see myself getting in all 4 images in a single session.

OTOH maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, maybe it would be a better approach to consider an image to be a project rather than the result of a single nights work. If it takes a whole month to acquire enough data of a target to produce a high quality LRGB image then so be it

You would then get a different result than what I was picturing above Dave, but it could look nice in the end!

Dave G - if you're after top quality images, avoid a one-shot colour if you're happy to shoot through four filres (RGB and clear) . The monochrome CCD chips are far more sensitive than the colour one's.

And don't forget, the RGB exposure times don't need to be the same length as the clear/luminance time. And you can bin the RGB data too.

And as you say, if high quality colour images are what you want to produce, they will invariably be 'projects' rather than a single nighter... If you approach it the project way, the quality will surely be so much better than a single colour shot from a colour CCD. And don't forget, the monochrome CCD still leaves the option for using other filters open (eg Ha).

BTW - nice image! Shame about the maths...

€0.02

Yup totally agree with you Dave. I think the phase of quick hit images is almost over. As I said really need to consider imaging projects rather than targets. I've decided that my first project will be M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy.

I got some luminance data last night, need some more and then onto the RGB components. With the short nights upon us, I can see some 1am sessions in early june and ending up with a small few blue filtered images and considering that a success.

Of course the other plus side is that you can consistently add data to your shots so that each image becomes an evolution rather than a result.

At least thats how I see it going for me from now on. Also I've like to do a little bit of serious science too, no need for RGB data there!!

An observatory is also way up my priority list, gets a little tiresome, setting up and breaking down each session, thats lost imaging time, which is in short enough supply anyway!