Images from Last Sat night.

[Mosc_007]

Even though their were massive amounts of Dew the Seeing conditions at Linden last Sat night were the best they have been for a very long time.

I managed to get 3 Images done in the 10 Hours I stayed up their.


Leo Triplet. 24 Subs at 5 Mins each. I managed to tease some Colour out of it.
Cat's Paw Nebula. 12 Subs at 10 Mins each. Ha Filter. B&W looks better when using the Ha Filter.
Lagoon and Trifid Nebula. 15 Subs at 2 Mins each. Might have overdone the Colour a bit.

All images were taken with my C11 and Hyperstar. QHY10 CCD.


Charles

[raymo]

Very nice, well worth the effort.
raymo

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Charles :thumbsup: agree well worth the night out by the looks of things! Surprised the red extension isn't more prevalent with the Lagoon though.

[rustigsmed]

nice work Charles you've certainly got the hyperstar tamed, the star shapes are great. I like the cats paw and the lagoon/triffid, although as Dunk has hinted at the background looks a little dark. but great images nonetheless!

Russ

[Camelopardalis]

Ah yeah, don't get me wrong I think they're crackers! There's quite a star field in that area and the Lagoon leaks quite a way :D

[rustigsmed]

yep I agree, great images, perhaps there could be some more neb teased out there is all :)

[Mosc_007]

Thanks for the great replies Guy's.

I agree with all your comments.

I have tried not to kill the background too much but it keeps happening. I have been advised by a Friend to check out the Monitor I am using when doing the processing. It's quite probable the bottom end has been turned up. And when I think I have a bit of grey background, on a different monitor its just black.

I am still learing the processing side of things. Taking the Images is pretty easy. The hard part is processing them. Especialy with the CCD.

I also agree that the top part of the lagoon nebula should have shown up more. I might have another play with it and see if I can find it.


Charles

[Camelopardalis]

One way to tell if you're clipping blacks (or whites for that matter) regardless of your monitor calibration is to look at the RGB histogram...most processing software has this. Ideally, the peak is away from either side (left or right) and there's not an accumulation of pixels at either end.

This could of course be natural in your data...in which case, I'd suggest exposing for longer and seeing how the histogram moves. I've not used a CCD so I could have it all wrong :D I only use a little DSLR though.

[Mosc_007]

I have had a play with the Lagoon & Trifid Image.

I managed to get more of the Detail in the Lagoon Nebula. I did have a very hard time with the colour balance though. The bottom end on the QHY10 CCD is always very green.

Is this an Improvement or a step backwards ?

I did blow out the centre of Lagoon though.


Charles

[Camelopardalis]

Looks like a good improvement to me :thumbsup: lots of extension and other faint wisps in there! f/2 rocks :D

Colour balance doesn't look too bad to my eyes either, maybe a hint of green but nothing much.

[rustigsmed]

yep that's an improvement :thumbsup:

this tutorial may help with the processing and preventing the highlights blowing out while still managing on digging out the fainter stuff.
http://myastroimages.com/Astro_Imaging_Tutorials/Learning_To_Use_PhotoShop_Curves/

[raymo]

I have a question that is a bit off topic, but is nicely illustrated by one of
Charles' images.
How is it that the blue in M20 is nicely shown, but the blue in the centre
of M8 is totally absent ?
raymo

[Mosc_007]

Thanks. I thought it was better but it is very subjective. A pity I blew out the center a bit though. I didn't notice it straight away as the colour balance took most of the time. After I noticed, it was too late to recover it.

I didn't expect to see the red tones come out away from the Nebula. That was a surprise. I did spend some time on it this time. I started from scratch and even stacked again.

Their was quite a green bar accross the top of the image as well. I was able to get rid of most of it. But still a small amount left.

The whole image did have a Green tinge but I managed to remove most of it.

I had to do the RGB channels seperatly to try and balance it. Also played with adjusting colour balance seperatly on Lowlights, Mid tones and highlights.


Charles

[Mosc_007]

Thanks for the tip. I will have a read. I don't use Photoshop but PSP8 is very similar, Although it's quite old and no Astro specific tools.

I do some of the processing in Nebulosity although the Curves tool in Nebulosity is very limited. I Can only adjust 2 points on the curve. PSP8 lets me adjust any point along the curve. The DPP Tool in Nebulosity is amazing though.


Charles

[kosh]

Very nice Charles.

I think the second version is better. You can see more of m8's extended nebulosity compared to the original, and the original looked a bit too subdued overall anyway IMO.

Goran.

[Camelopardalis]

There's blue in the centre of M8? :confused2:

[raymo]

I could show you one of my images of M8 Dunk, but I don't want to hijack the thread. I'll just post one in a new thread for our purposes, not for general comments.
raymo

[andyc]

Hi Raymo, I've added what I think is an explanation on the separate thread you created.

[bugeater]

In the thread I posted about my Lagoon image, I used the HDRMultiscaleTransform tool in Pixinsight to pull out the core detail. Once you work out how to use it (basically use it on your stretched data), it seems to work really easily and well (in my very limited experience).

You can use a fully functional version of Pixinsight on a 45 day trial. It's worth having a go, though you've got to be persistent since the learning curve is quite steep.

But love your images by the way.