Phil Hart
07-04-2014, 09:07 PM
As usual I am behind on processing, and these could use a lot more work, but here is what I am calling 'first lights' from my new country home in Mount Glasgow (central Victoria), which is part-time while working and staying in Melbourne a few days/nights a week as well.
All three are with an off-the-shelf Canon 6D.
Orion is with 50mm lens. Captured very late in the season (Jan/Feb), swamped with gradients and therefore very ugly processing:
http://philhart.smugmug.com/DeepSkyAstrophotography/Constellations/29739258_KZ4MLT#!i=3128938131&k=rFzKwHp
LMC with 200mm lens (some serious flat calibration issues to work on here still):
http://philhart.smugmug.com/DeepSkyAstrophotography/Galaxies/29739241_nBWWpC#!i=3154455520&k=7NdrsSg
Eta Carinae region with 200mm lens:
http://philhart.smugmug.com/DeepSkyAstrophotography/Milky-Way-and-Constellations/29433495_pjbF4H#!i=3154455681&k=ngDgXp4&lb=1&s=X2
Each of these images is about ten hours of exposures.. just cause I can and because it's easier to repeat a sequence from the previous night than work out a new object framing etc.
These images also mark my first proper foray into PixInsight, which I've previously only used for Dynamic Background Extraction.
As usual with my old software options, I was having trouble *again* with image registration on the widefield images so I gave the new Batch Pre-Processing Script in PixInsight a go and was very impressed with the now fairly automatic calibration. And image registration was excellent.. very time consuming across a large number of files but PI just kept plugging away and never missed a beat. Very reassuring seeing the console update status all the way through. Very tight stars across the frame, which neither ImagesPlus nor DeepSkyStacker could do. I even tried pulling Registar out of the closet but I couldn't get it to cooperate properly anymore.. it just kept crashing.
Now to start planning the next imaging projects..
Phil
All three are with an off-the-shelf Canon 6D.
Orion is with 50mm lens. Captured very late in the season (Jan/Feb), swamped with gradients and therefore very ugly processing:
http://philhart.smugmug.com/DeepSkyAstrophotography/Constellations/29739258_KZ4MLT#!i=3128938131&k=rFzKwHp
LMC with 200mm lens (some serious flat calibration issues to work on here still):
http://philhart.smugmug.com/DeepSkyAstrophotography/Galaxies/29739241_nBWWpC#!i=3154455520&k=7NdrsSg
Eta Carinae region with 200mm lens:
http://philhart.smugmug.com/DeepSkyAstrophotography/Milky-Way-and-Constellations/29433495_pjbF4H#!i=3154455681&k=ngDgXp4&lb=1&s=X2
Each of these images is about ten hours of exposures.. just cause I can and because it's easier to repeat a sequence from the previous night than work out a new object framing etc.
These images also mark my first proper foray into PixInsight, which I've previously only used for Dynamic Background Extraction.
As usual with my old software options, I was having trouble *again* with image registration on the widefield images so I gave the new Batch Pre-Processing Script in PixInsight a go and was very impressed with the now fairly automatic calibration. And image registration was excellent.. very time consuming across a large number of files but PI just kept plugging away and never missed a beat. Very reassuring seeing the console update status all the way through. Very tight stars across the frame, which neither ImagesPlus nor DeepSkyStacker could do. I even tried pulling Registar out of the closet but I couldn't get it to cooperate properly anymore.. it just kept crashing.
Now to start planning the next imaging projects..
Phil