First Light Astronomik H alpha Filter

[seeker372011]

The moon was really bright last night but with my brand new Astronomik H alpha filter in hand who cares?

This is my first light image..6 x 10 minute subs @ ISO 800

Modded Canon 300D/ED 80/CG 5 autoguided

aligned and stacked in IRIS and processed in Photoshop...
no noise reduction program applied

For a larger image see

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=440398208&size=o

thanks for looking, comments and suggestions welcome

narayan

[Ric]

Very nice Narayan, the more I see these H-alpha images the more I'm convinced that I should invest in one. They show up so much amazing detail.

Top stuff

[richardo]

Hi Narayan,
the Ha filter is a very good investment for these 'moon lick nits', excuse my
Scottish...:D

I love the FOV your getting with the ED80/ 300D combo....
If any thing, I reckon you've started to burn the brighter core and stars a wee bit in bringing out the contrast....
back this off and try a good curve in PS or what ever finalising software your using.... you'll find doing this you'll retain good detail and enhance the different transitions of grey scale across the image.
If your using PS CS or CS2, try using the 'shadows/ highlights' filter, a good filter for enhancement and a cheats 'curve' you could say.

Good stuff though, your setup looks like it's working well.

All the best
Rich

[beren]

:thumbsup: top image ....wish i knew your secret to get the CG5 up to 10 min autoguided :P

[RB]

Fantastic work Narayan !

[xelasnave]

Well worth the investment it seems. Great capture.
alex

[seeker372011]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will have a play and see what I can come up with.

I do often-and actually did use in this instance -the shadow/highlight filter..maybe I should have faded it a bit more than I did..
narayan

[seeker372011]

polar alignment!
if thats off I can only get 5 minutes without seeing trails due to field rotation

also ..my guide scope is 900 mm, my imaging scope is 600 mm in focal length..the opposite of many people's set up..could that have something to do with it?
narayan

[seeker372011]

For lack of something more constructive to do, I combined the H alpha data with the RGB data I collected earlier this month....conscious of the comment Rich made I used a layer mask to reveal the core of the rgb image..so hopefully it is not as badly burnt out as the H alpha image

issues-the H alpha image has much tighter stars, and aligning in PS is a royal pain in the batoota, but anyway here is my result

here is a link to a larger image

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=441863546&size=o

[iceman]

Stunning result, Narayan! You've come a long way!

[DobDobDob]

Yes I echo Mikes remarks, that is a superb image :thumbsup: