Southern Pleiades

[SimmoW]

Nowhere near as much data as Humayun's luverly version but was happy with the result, 30mins will do me until next time! What an impressive yet under-imaged target.

https://flic.kr/p/Uijzkh

[Tinderboxsky]

Nice image Simon. The Southern Pleiades are one of my favourite visual targets.
You can see the much fainter open cluster, Mel 101 towards the upper right hand corner. The cluster of faint points of light provide a visual contrast to the bright stars of the Southern Pleiades.

[Camelopardalis]

Beautiful :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

Really nice Simon :)

[Andy01]

As mentioned elsewhere, that's a lovely image. :)
A dense rich starfield with natural colours.
Doesn't have the famous nebulousity of it's more famous cousin M45 but still a great target regardless- well done! :thumbsup:

[RickS]

Nice star colours, Simon.

[gregbradley]

A very pleasing image Simmon.
Greg

[DJT]

Great image, Simon
That starfield as a backdrop to the open cluster is quite something and the colours are well balanced.
:thumbsup:

[atalas]

Me like this one....is very nice:thumbsup:

Hey Simon,I see your using a MyT....enjoying It?I'm thinking of getting one for a portable mount.

[multiweb]

Great highres. The field is beautifully resolved. :thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

Striking colours Simon. I have not seen many images of this cluster. Back ground looks good too.

[strongmanmike]

Wow, that's really quite lovely Simmon, great stuff, like blue Sapphires lying on sand. If I may make a single simple suggestion, some of the cluster star cores have been flattened slightly so they have lost their intensity and sparkle, if you re-intensify these, I recon the image will look even better :thumbsup:

Mike

[Placidus]

Hi, Simon,

A beautiful shot. We had to look up that gorgeous rich cluster (Melotte 101) toward the top right, which has some exquisite colours.

You can raise the black point by pretty close to 9000 counts (16 bit) without losing any data, and the result absolutely sparkles.

Best,
Mike and Trish

[SimmoW]

Hey thanks! Yes the mount is excellent, obviously great quality.
But definitely take a close look at Astrophysics mounts as well,
especially if you don't want to grapple with Theskyx software.
Either choice would be a no brainer.

[SimmoW]

Thanks Steve, yes I found that little open cluster fascinating and it definitely screams out for a longer scope treatment.


Ta!!


Thanks Colin, I remember imaging this with my 40D early on in my adventures and always thought the object had great potential. Maybe one day I'll do it good justice..



Ta Andy, glad you like the colours



Hmm Rick, there's a common thread here! Cant wait to use that new PI tool though..


Great to hear your compliment Gregg!



Thanks to you David, still waiting for you to reprocess it for me involuntarily??



Thanks Marc, yes the short subs and better collimation of my scope helped. But now my mirror is filthy again and my pulling apart didn't quite work. So I'm now tweaking the setup on my new 10 inch scope



Thanks Paul, go get her yourself now!



Thanks Mike. I'll see what I can do soon.



Wow thanks M&T. You need to get 101 in your sights! Not sure what you mean by the black point? You mean drag the histogram a bit more over to have the dark less to the right?

[Placidus]

Yes, exactly that. If you look at the left hand end of the histogram on just about any astro-image early in processing, you can see a broad and tall peak at the left hand end, whose position represents the brightness range of the dark background. The left hand edge of that peak shows the brightness of the very darkest darks in the image. In yours, that is at about 5000 counts out of 65535. That point is so important I reckon it needs a name, so I call it the "foothill" brightness.

You can, as you say, slide the histogram further over to the left, by 5000 counts in your case, so that the foothill point comes much closer to zero brightness. That is exactly the same as just subtracting 9000 counts from the brightness of every pixel in the image. In the case of your particular image, since there are no (or negligible) pixels with a brightness of less than 5000 counts, you lose no astrophotographic information, but make the image look much more sparkly, all completely non-destructively, and pretty much for free. Subtracting more than the foothill brightness (5000 counts in your case), or "clipping" the left hand end of the histogram, would be disastrous, because you would lose genuine dark features from your image.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Mike

[SimmoW]

Ah cool, thanks M&T, a coincidence as I'd just finished yours and Mike's suggested changes. I think this is what you were after? Didn't pull it all the way to the left, I tend to like my backgrounds a tad lighter myself. Same with you Mike, are the star cores better?

Edit - link to AB version..http://www.astrobin.com/299600/

[Lognic04]

WOW! Love the colours!

[strongmanmike]

Yup! If I blink between the two versions visible on AB the difference/improvement is clear, the cluster sparkles more and stands out more from the background, eeeexcellent Smithers, eeeexcellent :thumbsup:

[SimmoW]

Well, well, so I actually learned something! Thanks Mike and Mike'nTrish!

[LewisM]

Yeah, it'll do I guess.










:P