M1 - The Crab - 12/03/2007

Here's a quick attempt at processing an image of M1 I took this evening.
Sbig St-8XME, 12" f/6.3 SCT, 10 x 10min exposures guided.



If I get a chance tomorrow evening with a fresh pair of eyes, I'll try processing it again.

Regards,

Michael,

Lots of beautiful and intricate detail within the nebula itself. However, the stars are very slightly oval throughout ... is this a guiding issue, a windy evening or a problem with the optics?

With colour data added, it should be a killer image.

However, the stars are very slightly oval throughout ... is this a guiding issue, a windy evening or a problem with the optics?

Anthony,

A user problem most likely! Individual frames look ok so may be something in the way they were aligned. I'll give it a go tomorrow evening again.

Cheers,

*jaw drops*

WOW

Holy mother .....

That is probably the most stunning amateur image I've ever seen. The detail is stunning, it actually looks 3d!

*take hat off*

Magnificent Michael. The detail is phenomenal. Congrats. What Anthony said about the stars. You use images plus right? Did you use the centrois or correllate method of alingment. I always found the centroid method to be far more reliable and accurate.

I used Maxim to auto-align the images and combine by sigma-clip.
I used the f6.3 focal reducer and noticed slight distortion on some of the stars on one side of the image, producing some stars with little comet-like defects on them. Only along the edge of one side though, which may be due to the fact that the offset of the main imaging chip can be adjusted relative to the optical path and hence it might be slightly away from the centre of the optical path. Didn't really notice them too much last night - bit tired. When I'm stacking the images again this evening, I might crop these out beforehand as it may be throwing the results off a little.
I must also start taking flats, darks and bias and subtracting them out of the image. All in due course...