Image Capture Something I've learned

[Tracy]

Don't get dead set on all your capture times being the same.
I've been playing around doing some nebulae captures and noticed that my Ha/SII/OIII were not that impressive (240-300 second captures). I just started working on M1 and decided to try something different. I'm running them at a 600 second capture and there is a WORLD of difference between the detail of the 300 ones.
I will be adding some comparison images once I get some.. but tonight I'm trying to grab some data that I inadvertently deleted whenI reset my RPi trying to troubleshoot it.
One thing to be aware of... you need your RA/DEC in as low (preferably sub 1.0) if you are going to do 600+ second exposures. I'm getting some slight elongation on my images, and my mount is showing a pretty stead RA/DEC...but it is above 1.0.

This is a quick screen capture over the VNC of what OIII did @ 10 minutes

 

[Tracy]

Another thing I'm learning... if shooting (with a mono camera) most galaxies, then concentrate on your LRGB. If shooting a reflective nebula, concentrate on LRGB. If shooting an emission nebula, concentrate more on Ha/OIII/SII filters.

 

[OhNo]

Yes galaxies benefit with the use of LRGB filters. Narrowband for Nebula. I have found that you can get descent Galaxy images with NB, but the stars tend to be colorless.

What some ppl will do is shoot the focal point (main object) with NB. They will go and use LRGB for the stars. I use StarNet ++ to remove the stars to the main object image. Open the LRGB stack and remove (Star mask in StarNet ++) the focal object leaving the LRGB stars. You then fiddle with each separately until you're happy, then you combine the two images in Pixel Math...... Easy peezy!

Time consuming though!