I decided to revisit the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 and gather some more data. In the process, I learnt how to stack images from different sessions in Deep Sky Stacker. I also improved my Siril processing techniques. I think there’s still more to come from this galaxy so I’ll revisit again at some point and show further updates.
I’ve never though of M3 as being a particularly exciting target. I mean, it’s just a bundle of stars. However, I thought it would be a good test of focus, resolution, noise, gain, and FWC, so I gave it 30mins. After I processed it, I realized I’ve been wrong all this time. It’s actually quite an interesting target and I’ll be giving it some more attention at some point in future.
This was my first attempt after moving from my old Raspberry Pi and Kstars/Ekos/Indi workflow to a small form factor PC and N.I.N.A. It was also my first attempt with my new scope, imaging camera and guide camera, so really it was all new to me. It was also an evening with a full moon so light pollution was really against me. However, I managed to get an hour or so of data and the end result wasn’t bad. I might revisit this at some point.
After I got my new lens, I was keen to take a pic of a known quantity so I could compare what I did previously. This was still unguided and stil using my Raspberry Pi camera, and still using the KStars/Ekos workflow running on Raspberry Pi. The only difference between this and my previous attempt was the lens. As you can see it’s far from perfect but it is much sharper now. I will revisit at some point and see if I can improve again.
This was probably the best photo I got from my old equipment. I used an Az-Gti (unguided), an ancient DSLR zoom lens, a Raspberry Pi HQ camera, and a software workflow consisting of several Raspberry Pi running Kstars/Ekos. I had a lot of fun with this equipment but barely got any results worth showing. The most important thing is that I learnt a lot and decided it was worth investing in some better equipment.
