NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae

[Outcast (Carlton)]

Finally processed the better data from an imaging session in late September.

Not my finest work; some dumb decisions made when PA was proving difficult.

I've sat on this data for some time, perhaps hoping it would improve with age or something.....

Anyways, here it is...

Please feel free to comment...

Meade S5000 80mm Triplet
Celestron CG 5
Canon EOS 70d
Approximately 1.5hrs of data (30sec & 45sec) @ ISO 800, Darks for both exposure ranges, no flats. Stacked in DSS, processed in Startools

[raymo]

Very nice; even better if you quieten down the blown out core.
raymo

[Outcast (Carlton)]

Originally Posted by raymo

Very nice; even better if you quieten down the blown out core.
raymo

Thanks Raymo, I did have a crack at toning down the core in my Photo editing software but, it didn't look very natural... in fact it looked worse... probably a 'me' limit rather than the software itself...

Need to do some reading & view some tutorials on the software I use for final tweaking to see if I can tone that core down without it looking very odd...

Given all the issues I had with tracking & PA followed subsequently by some rather dumb decisions on how to fix my problems... I was pleasantly surprised at how this turned out... data I collected in the same night for Eagle Nebula is horrendous & no amount of processing will fix it..

Cheers

[Startrek (Martin)]

Hi Carlton
Nice image, but yes unfortunately the core is blown out

For such a bright globular cluster can I suggest that 1 hour of integration at same exposure lengths ( say 30 sec ) and ISO is plenty as your image scale is around 1.7 arc sec per pixel

In Startools, do you use Auto develop for your first stretch and final stretch or develop ? Develop tends to bloat your stars and brighten your background whereas with Auto develop you have more control

Martin

[Outcast (Carlton)]

Originally Posted by Startrek

Hi Carlton
Nice image, but yes unfortunately the core is blown out

For such a bright globular cluster can I suggest that 1 hour of integration at same exposure lengths ( say 30 sec ) and ISO is plenty as your image scale is around 1.7 arc sec per pixel

In Startools, do you use Auto develop for your first stretch and final stretch or develop ? Develop tends to bloat your stars and brighten your background whereas with Auto develop you have more control

Martin

Hi Martin,

All good info, thankyou. I had not imaged a globular cluster before so, wasn't sure what would work (or not).

Still very much feeliing my way with Startools, I did use Auto develop but, didn't play with any of the controls as I am still trying to understand what they actually do... possibly a little impatient to get a result & perhaps need to take some more time & gain a better understanding of what I am doing I think.

I still have the raw data & stack so, can reprocess the 30 sec data separately, re stack & reprocess to see if I can improve the result. The beauty of digital imaging...

I take my hat off to those guys that used to do this stuff with film, I have absolutely no idea how they got the images they did, I honestly don't...

Cheers

[raymo]

We used to dodge and/or burn in the darkroom. It was quite surprising what
could be achieved by a skillful dodger/burner.
raymo

[crs (Colin)]

an observation - the stars seem to be elongated pointing out from the centre - what causes that?