I guess I’m still in a bicolor rut, but at least I got away from the widefield stuff. Here’s M1 with eight ten minute exposures each Ha and OIII. Working at F/8 instead of F/5 is about one aperture stop decrease, so Ideally I’d be doubling exposure time.  I lack the patience so I’m still using 10 minute exposures. Click the thumbnail above for the larger version, or click here for less compressed.

I know – I promised no more bicolor widefields this season. It rained much of the weekend, though, and I can’t swap optical tubes with the roof closed! I decided to make the best of it and grabbed this one. Eight exposures ten minutes each, H-a and OIII. Same equipment lineup as the last several. Less compressed here.

This should be the last one with the Tak for the season. It looks like it will be a while before we have sky here again and I expect to be back on the Meade by then. Less compressed here .

Next-to-last image with the Meade for this season.

12″ Meade LX850, QSI683WSG-8

This was the last capture before tearing things down to permit sending in the outboard SCT focuser for service. I’ll be using the FSQ-106N until I get that sorted.

Twelve exposures of ten minutes each L, nine exposures of five minutes each R,G,B.

Finally had some decent seeing last night. No deconvolution or sharpening required. Starlock did a great job at .88 arcseconds/pixel. 8  exposures of ten minutes each Ha and OIII, artificial green channel. I will tone the red down when time permits but here’s what I have so far.

More at http://astrob.in/112019/0/

Finally – another RGB image. Narrowband filters won’t help with this one. It’s very dim. I just wanted to see what could be done with it from my urban location. It isn’t great, but it’s much better than I expected! Seven five minute exposures each R, G, B (no time for L on a work night). Usual gear; 12″ LX850, QSI683WSG-8.

Larger version: http://astrob.in/109041/B/

I’m kind of locked into this bicolor narrowband mode – but at least I stumbled onto an appropriately sized target this time. It’s a nice, big planetary nebula. As usual, the sky didn’t cooperate during the weekend so this was another worknight (read “in a  hurry to get to bed”) shot. Grabbed an hour each Ha and OIII. Still using the 12″ Meade LX850 and the QSI683WSG-8.

Can be seen at http://astrob.in/108701/B/ and presumably that one will get updated as time is found to tune up the processing.

Not a great night fopr imaging; transparency was as bad as the Clear Sky Chart said it would be so even with 8 minute exposures it was noisy. Cleaned it up as best I could in a hurry so I can go to bed (work day tomorrow). I might be able to do a more gentle job later. 48 minutes each Ha and OIII, 12″ Meade LX850, QSI683WSG-8 – as usual. I’ll be switching to the FSQ-106N soon. This target makes much more sense at that scale!

Larger version at http://astrob.in/107769/0/

I don’t remember the last time I was able to image two nights in a row! This is 8 exposure groups, each with 5 minute luminance and 100 second R, G, and B. Still with the 12″ LX850 and QSI683WSG-8. Larger version at http://astrob.in/105711/0/ .