My first “successful” L+R+G+B Integration using my monochrome camera. Still a bit of a work in progress, but I was pretty happy with this all things considered. Unfortunately, a few blades of grass ended up in my dew shield and I am guessing the reflection caused some funky gradients on the right side of the image, but otherwise, for relatively few frames in a bottle 7 sky this turned out not half-bad from my backyard. I can’t wait to get some longer shots with better exposure settings under a darker sky @ CRO!
Equipment:
Apertura 75q with .75 reducer
QHY 268M Camera
Filter wheel - L,R,G,B
QHY5III568 guide camera with 32mmx132mm, f4 guide scope
iOptron HAE16C mount. I’m really impressed with this little fella - I normally use my WD-20 but I’m testing this for some future trips.
30 45-second images for each of the 4 filters.
Processed in Pixinsight, finished off in Photoshop.
Edit:
I’ve added a bit of “HA” to the image and worked the overall image a bit more to bump the contrast and improve color. I hadn’t bothered processing the HA captures at the initial time of processing because I didn’t feel I had captured enough data. By the time in the evening, the 5th set of photos, m31 started hiding behind one of my overgrown Bradford Pear trees from where I set up, and branches had begun appearing in the HA shots so I cut their time short. Surprisingly I was able to get some usable data from those which in turn sparked some interest in trying to improve this a bit more.
