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The Christmas Tree Cluster to the Rosette Nebula Wide Field 85mm RGB, Eric Smith
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The Christmas Tree Cluster to the Rosette Nebula Wide Field 85mm RGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The Christmas Tree Cluster to the Rosette Nebula Wide Field 85mm RGB, Eric Smith
Powered byPixInsight

The Christmas Tree Cluster to the Rosette Nebula Wide Field 85mm RGB

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

I have been experimenting with pairing a modestly priced astro camera and a low cost DSLR camera for wide field astro photography.

The lens I used was a Samyang 85mm f1.4 set at f4 to help with abberation, paired with an ASI183MC OSC camera.  It was the first astro camera I bought over three years ago for under 600 Euros and still performs really well.

It's a little like using an astro modified DSLR camera with a prime lens that many astro photographer start using because it is what they have already.
This image takes it a little step closer by using a dedicated cooled astro camera with small pixels (2.4 microns) to improve the resolution at wide focal lengths.

It's not the first time I have tried this combination but gave up due to the camera lens being so poor with edge distortion creating seagull looking stars away from the centre of the feeld of view. This  time however, I re-tried the idea because of the new V4 engine of Blur Xterminator by @Russell Croman

To be honest, the performance of this new tool is incredible and allows astro photographers with modest equipment to produce exceptional results.  This image is from two nights in January 2024 from Los Coloraos, Gorafe, Spain. The equipment was mounted under the Esprit 100ED telescope as an experiment at the end of the year 2023.  It was manually focused and has not been touched since, but does seem to hold focus really well.

Thanks for looking and I hope it encourages others to try using their basic kit again, but with the new processing tools available to bring out the best of their data.

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The Christmas Tree Cluster to the Rosette Nebula Wide Field 85mm RGB, Eric Smith