I apologise for not contributing to this forum for a long time. Looks like the wet in north QLD is starting to finally subside, so I unboxed the rig(almost felt like opening boxes with new astro toys) and attempted putting it all together.
Easy target for a starter - a stack of 20-minute subs giving nearly 10 hours in total taken with a 4" refractor. Humidity is still a tad high but the skies were nicely clear during the past two nights.
Your image has a wonderfully three-dimensional feel to it: actual banks of cloud rather than a flat map look. Interestingly, presenting it "up side down" also gives a fresh perspective, enticing us to hunt around for all our favourite bits.
Thank you all very much for your feedback, I really appreciate it as it helps me to grow as an amateur imager.
Andy, your comment about this image being out of focus and not sharp intrigued me, particularly that you have made similar comments about my images in the past.
Curious, I looked up your images of the same target on Astrobin, one taken with 70mm and the other with 110mm refractor, and made a little side-by-side comparison, without altering your images in the slightest, just aligning all three, with my image taken with 105mm being in the middle. This comparison is purely a result of your repeated comment about lack of sharpness in my images - I will delete the comparison if you feel I breached copyrights.
When looking at star sizes, I think the middle one has the tightest stars, in spite of imaging from humid North Queensland. Do you think that my images appear to be less sharp because I aim at preserving natural structures during data processing?
Thank you all very much for your feedback, I really appreciate it as it helps me to grow as an amateur imager.
Andy, your comment about this image being out of focus and not sharp intrigued me, particularly that you have made similar comments about my images in the past.
Curious, I looked up your images of the same target on Astrobin, one taken with 70mm and the other with 110mm refractor, and made a little side-by-side comparison, without altering your images in the slightest, just aligning all three, with my image taken with 105mm being in the middle. This comparison is purely a result of your repeated comment about lack of sharpness in my images - I will delete the comparison if you feel I breached copyrights.
When looking at star sizes, I think the middle one has the tightest stars, in spite of imaging from humid North Queensland. Do you think that my images appear to be less sharp because I aim at preserving natural structures during data processing?
Images credit (left and right): Andy Campbell
Hi Suavi,
Maybe it’s a processing choice, maybe it’s because it’s an image of gas & not a hard structure. Then again maybe it’s just me being used to seeing sharpness in day to day professional images!
I’m also a tad paranoid about apparent sharpness due to recent collimation errors in my ‘scopes.
Interesting discussion
Cheers
Andy
Ps: Your Ha stars should of course be sharper & tighter than my RGB ones, taken under LP
Ps: Your Ha stars should of course be sharper & tighter than my RGB ones, taken under LP
Well, both of your images of the same target are also narrowband, and light pollution does not really affect the size of stars nor image sharpness
I think it happens too often in amateur astro-imaging that image sharpness is induced by artificially distorting gaseous nebulosity to make an impression of the image being sharp, while in fact small star size gives a truer idea of data quality; IMHO nebulosity should remain soft and without sharp edges, unless we are imaging shockwaves.
I think you missed my point Suavi, I replaced my NB stars with RGB stars in both of the images you have highlighted
Fair enough - the box with acquisition info for both images does not have this information on Astrobin, and since there are purple halos around stars, particularly noticeable in the 110mm version, so I assumed all are pure narrowband
Looking forward to seeing your sharp image of the Lagoon (without worms)
Looking forward to seeing your sharp image of the Lagoon (without worms)
Can’t see another Lagoon happening for me this season, but perhaps instead I can offer this latest image up for your consideration? Ha only, from suburbia
nice job 
