ASI533MC first light - Bode in HaRGB

[Padraic M]

Last week was first light with a ASI533MC Pro, in Bortle 2 but with a full moon and a stiff breeze. Bode was a good test subject as it was at a good angle away from the moon.

 

The 533 is very easy to handle with the SW 150PDS and TS coma corrector - just using the spacers supplied with the camera to give the correct back focus. I could cool to -20c when outside, but couldn't match it the following day to shoot darks, so the image below is shot at -20c and calibrated with -15c darks. I'll shoot at -15c or -10c in future. 

 

I'm surprised that there isn't more colour in the final image. The galaxy is a jaundiced yellow straight out of APP, and the stars are also yellow. APP star colour calibration (csc) washed out the galaxy and still didn't add much colour to the stars. I experimented with galaxy-only and star-only frames using Starnet++; also tried Startools; but in the end settled with a lpc-cbg (no star calibration) output from APP with some Hydrogen Alpha added from an earlier mono session and finished in Gimp.

 

Total exposure is 3hrs 20m RGB (mixture of 30s and 60s subs) + 2hrs 45m Ha.

 

[GazAstro]

NIce, agree about the colour though ... possibly the Moon washing things out more than expected ?

[Padraic M]

I may look at reprocessing as I captured M36 on the same night, same setup, and the colour is much better.

 

Edited March 23, 2022 by Padraic M

[rwillits]

Your image looks very good 👍