Hi all,
First time poster here, I've been imaging for about a year now. Slowly making progress i feel looking back to earlier this year. I've always been hesitant to show anyone my images as I know they're not really the best, but they are mine and I'd love to keep improving.
So i thought hey I'd jump in the deep end and start putting them online as it's probably the best way forward to get some constructive feedback for improvement in terms of capture, processing etc. So here i am no more hiding in the dark! I'm reading and learning so much but I'm sure someone will come up with an area of improvement I'd never even think of.
A few things i already know is that i need to work on my coma corrector spacing as corner stars aren't the best. I needed dark frames on this one & i made a dogs breakfast out of the star reduction (please don't zoom in haha
) Processing probably a complete mess too but here we are
Attached is an image of the Tarantula nebula i captured last night.
I managed to get just under 5 hours of data on it.
Equipment
Equipment list is as follows
Skywatcher EQ6R-Pro
Skywatcher 130P
Nikon D5600 (I've removed the stock IR Filter)
ZWO IR Cut Filter
Baader Coma Corrector
Guiding I'm using a Skywatcher 9x50 finder scope that i made up a sensor housing for with an IMX291 sensor
Acquisition
Capture details were as follows (Using BackyardNikon)
28 x Light Frames 600 seconds @ 200 ISO
I am hoping to get more data on the subject so i used an existing BIAS set and flat set that i had. I did have to do some gradient removal as the flat set didn't match up perfectly due to what I'm assuming is camera rotation since i took it.
Stacking
I have used DSS to stack the images using 2x Drizzle (I have dithered in PHD2)
Processing
Post stacking i put the image into gimp, cropped & scaled it. Stretched the levels > white balanced the levels > did a star reduction by fuzzy selecting the stars and using the value propagate function > performed some curve adjustments > removed gradients > added a little bit of saturation > final white balance tweaks.
Any comments/feedback would be much appreciated. Would love to improve where i can.
Cheers,
Cody