Hi Tyler, I got your FIT file. Very nice picture in itself, even without the color. I've always been an Ansel Adams kind of guy. Never bothered with color but now you've got me thinking... Tyler Allred wrote:
Seriously, the most likely reason for star bloat is poor tracking, but with your mount I don't think that is likely. It could also be focusing, but I assume you are getting your focus right (MaxIm is great for that). It is more likely to be a result of your processing.
I'm pretty sure I can rule out the tracking. I spend night after night creating new T-Point models and adjusting the polar alignment over and over again until I got the polar axis down to less than 2/10 arc minute from the pole. At 1,800mm I can can go about 5 minutes unguided before the stars show any trailing. Focusing is as close to perfect as I can get it. I used to focus manually but then I discovered the auto-focus feature on CCDSoft and found it to be every bit as good as manual focus but a whole lot faster. Oh, and I'm also using a Bisque mirror locking collar on the borrowed C-14 OTa I'm using at the moment so I don't think mirror flop is a problem. So that leaves me with processing and focal length.
Perhaps you could email one of your fits files to me so I could examine it.
I've posted a raw FIT to http://www.trilobyte.net/paw/temp/7331.FIT .
A dark subtracted version would be even better.
So you'd like to see a dark subtracted version that has _not_ been flat fielded? Is that correct?
I would love to get together some night to take a pretty picture or two using your equipment.
Sounds good to me. Let me know when you'd like to stop by.
This image was taken with the Tak Epsilon 160 at F/3.3, for 528mm...
I'll bet that explains it. Trouble is if I try to shorten my EFL any further I run into comma problems. I guess I could do as Jerry Foote suggested and do mosaics and then shrink them. That would have the same end result. Well, you've given me more to contemplate. Hmmm, maybe I could mount a Tak on my C-14... $ $ $ Thanks again, Patrick