M65-66, NGC 3628 Leo trio.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Hi,

Two years since I've imaged the trio.

Really need to beef up my focuser to reduce flexure with the extra weight of the cooler box. I spent some time trying to clean up the stars.

some nice colour coming through, a few more hours and I should get the faint outer loop on M 66.

8” F/4 astrograph , baader type coma corrector, HEQ Pro 5 mount, orion mini guider.
Camera.
Unmodded Cannon 1100D. Cooler box.

16 x 8 minute subs ISO 400 . Darks, Flats and bias frames applied. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker .Processed in Photoshop 7 .
Cheers,

Justin.

[Rigel003]

Very nice, Justin. Good detail in all the spirals. Background maybe a little dark and devoid of stars. Makes the galaxies look lonely within the field. Is that deep red dot under the brightest star an actual star or an artifact?

[Larryp]

Nice work, Justin :thumbsup:

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Thanks Graeme!

Yep a little dark, just hiding a less than perfect background.
The number of stars is right. Not sure about the deep red dot, seems to be a star in the unprocessed image.



Thanks Laurie!

Cheers,

Justin.

[cometcatcher]

Nice detail there Justin. It's been about 25 years since I shot these lol.

How do you get the star colours so vivid?

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Thanks Kevin!

I usually saturate the stars three times in PS. First an overall image saturation to about 25%. Then I select stars using the magic wand and expand 3 to 7 pixels and saturate again to as much as 50%. I also use the noise filter, gausian blur and unsharp mask to try and clean the stars up.
Finally and again with the whole image I may increase saturation of particular star colour by 10%.
I don't work with raw, always convert to tiff, I have more success this way.

Cheers,

Justin.

[cometcatcher]

Sounds complicated, but I do like the effect.

[batema]

Very nice. Love the colours.

[RickS]

Nice work, Justin! Just looks slightly black clipped as previously commented.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Thanks Mark!



Thanks Rick!

Yep clipped in the black, trying to hide the horrible background.

Cheers,

Justin.

[atalas]

Another nice pic Justin.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Thanks Louie!

I do find galaxy fields quite difficult to process though.

Cheers,

Justin.