My first processed image! M104

t a recent local astronomy club meeting, my friend Jim (a fairly experienced PI user and imager) presented on Getting Started With Astrophotography. One recommendation that I gleaned from that presentation (and which I had previously talked to him about) is the notion of LEARNING how to image process BEFORE spending big bucks on equipment.

As he said “If you don’t like sitting at your computer and spending hours processing, you’re not going to find value in equipment you don’t use if you buy gear first.”

Taking that to heart, I then purchased, installed, activated and configured (again with a bit ‘o help from Jim) PixInsight onto my new Dell Precision workstation, then added the needed RC Astro extensions and GAIA DR3 CSV plate solving db files (as well as some useful scripts from SetiAstro and SkyPixels).

I then signed up for a basic TelescopeLive subscription and obtained 49 calibrated FITS images for M104. I have no imaging equipment myself right now... Just a couple of medium-large visual Dobs (a 20" f/5 Tectron and a 14.5" f/5 Teeters).

Anyway, with significant assistance from Jim on getting started with PixInsight including work flows, icon sets and actually how to DO things in PixInsight, I hereby present M104, one of my favorite big/bright visual targets (it is simply splendid in my 20” scope under a dark transparent sky).

Planewave CDK24 Telescope located in Chile (CHI-1-CMOS);
QHY 600M Pro camera w/ Astrodon LRGB filters;
14-300s Luminance, 10-300s Red, 15-300s Green and 10-300s Blue; 2x2 binning; so a bit more than 4 hrs total integration time;
GraXpert, BlurXterminator, NoiseXterminator;
Image signatures for myself and TelescopeLive added using the SetiAstro script.