Not that flash I know.... After a frustrating evening last night polar misaligning the mount time and again - this evening was OK in the end.
Had a go at NGC253, as it was in a nice spot. It was fun to watch the galaxy's shape appear on the LCD....
Would love some suggestions on improvements I can do (I know there are a lot, but start at the top!)
Your off to a flying start Lee. Damn fine effort. You've managed to get round stars and that is always a bonus
What's your processing steps atm. It looks like you've "clipped" the white point. ie burnt the stars out with your processing trying to pull more out of the galaxy.
Good start Lee,needs a bit more exposure and you will be on a winner, as Paul says stars a bit burnt out
Do you mean 21:00 (9:00pm) local time 11:00 ut as Ngc 253 is very low down at 19:00 (7:00pm) local 09:00 ut?.
thats a great first image lee. you should be proud of it. The stars are quite good. Is it meant to be in black and white? what processing steps did you take? the background might be alittle too bright. here's a link to some processing videos which might help you out.
Damn it! Yes - I mean 1100 UTC...... always a trap converting 24hr time to UTC! thanks..... (fixed) - it was almost 1400 UTC when I did this last night!
Quote:
Originally Posted by astroron
Good start Lee,needs a bit more exposure and you will be on a winner, as Paul says stars a bit burnt out
Do you mean 21:00 (9:00pm) local time 11:00 ut as Ngc 253 is very low down at 19:00 (7:00pm) local 09:00 ut?.
The black and white - I did two sets, one with 10 1 minute exposures, and this one of 5 2 minute exposures.... the 1 minute one came out quite reddish, so I desaturated it (the only colour was in the sky anyway!)
Processing - raws converted to tiff, stacked with "keiths image stacker" (I did take darks but forgot to use them!), slight levels adjust in that program, then cropping, noise-ninja-ing, sharpening and levels/curves in photoshop 7. The stars did clip - I think they are a bit oversharpened too.....
Hi Lee,
Good to see you up and running with the new rig!!
Always takes a while to sort out the bugs etc..but you are off to a good start! A little too much unsharp in the 2min pics, much better in the 1 min stack. I ussually leave the unsharpening as one of the last processes as if you adjust curves, contrast after you`ll make these dark halos more obvious..
A great start Lee if you can go to 4-5min exposures you will get plenty of detail. Have you got it setup to guide?
My first night out was a bit of a disaster too, but last night managed to sort some out and got at least 6 good frames!!. Will post soon!
Cheers Gary
Gary - Saturday night was my disaster - took 2 hours to polar align! Was a good learning experience though. After I overcorrected in the wrong direction once or twice, things went pear shaped, then exacerbated by me centering on Beta-Centauri instead of alpha (hang on - I'm sure that wasn't a double come to think of it!! - damn straight through finder!!)
Got it within about 4 minutes of aligned in the end - was a struggle though! All seems OK so far in the tracking side, at the ED80 focal length anyway - these were all unguided, have barely even contemplated adding guiding to the mix yet!
Nice start......I like that you have not darkened the image even though you dont have enough exposure....it's something most people do including myself and a habit that is a hard to get out off.
Another imaging grasshoppper.... NGC253
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