Fighting Dragons or Ara

[RyanJones]

Hi all,

A last minute decision to head out of town last night paid off.

I used my new CLS CCD filter and with the naturally darker skies I could push my mount and guider a little further and see what I could do.

This image is 3hrs worth of 5min subs @ ISO 800.
Astro modded Canon 350d
Guided HEQ5 Pro with Nexguide SAG

I'm so happy with the data I collected which is a first for a while.

Thanks for Looking :)

[RyanJones]

I also love this target in black and white :)

[multiweb]

Looks great Ryan. :thumbsup:
I've been imaging that one as well for the past few nights, although a little closer.

[Mickoid]

Last night? Where did you go Ryan? It was cloudy in Melbourne last night. I wanted to go somewhere but didn't expect anywhere that wasn't too far out of Melbourne would have been clear.

Good on you for making the effort and a fine result you achieved. I've got one of those CLS CCD filters and find them difficult to colour correct in post processing, I notice your result looks a bit monochrome. Perhaps you could lift the saturation a little to gain a bit more colour but you're right, it does look good in black and white as well. :)

[RyanJones]

Thank you Marc. I'm looking forward to seeing your efforts

Thank you Michael. I've found myself a little spot out west about 30 mins from home. It's Bertole 3 compared to 8 at home. It was a last minute decision when I saw the cloud coming over and I checked clearoutside and the dark site was clear all night :thumbsup:
As far as the CLS/CCD is concerned, I had a CLS before and couldn't work out why I was struggling with it. It turns out that a lot of my problems where because the standard CLS doesn't have an IR cut filter. That's why I bought the CCD version. You are right, it's harder to process with this filter, and the brighter the sky the harder it becomes.
As far as the soft colours go, this is a challenge I've had with this modified camera since I got it. I find that it's easier to work with at ISO400 but then it's harder to capture feint things. If I just lift the saturation on the whole image, it pulls out all sorts of bad colour balances and artifacts and the tone stays soft anyway, it just becomes brighter. It's is something I'm working on though.

Cheers

Ryan

[ChrisV]

Very nice Ryan. Like you and Marc I've also been on it. But I'm just not very quick ...

[RyanJones]

Thank you Chris. I'm also looking forward to seeing your rendition. I assume you'll be using your STC duo on it. I put off buying one recently because I wanted to just concentrate on some of the issues I was having without introducing NB processing into the mix. It's still on the cards for later on though. I'm planning on adding some more time to this image, maybe with some different settings to see if I can add some more colour. There's some nice blue hues in this feild that I'd like to have. I get the feeling I might end up with a lot of time on this one.:thumbsup:

[Shark6]

Me 2 :thumbsup:

[xelasnave]

Well done. I want to get it at some stage. So much coming up the list is undoable I think.
Alex