M16

[Tony Leece]

M16 The Eagle Nebula from the 16th and 18th of June.

Best frames from a total of 4 and a half hours of unguided 2 minute subs (ended up being around 2 hours).
SW ED80
2"L-extreme
533mcp gain 101 offset 70
AZEQ6gt mount
Main processing and cropped in PS
Star reduction in GIMP
and SCNR in Pixinsight LE

Thanks for looking :)

277208

[RyanJones]

Very nice Tony. It’s a beautiful object. One that I’m hanging out to get back to when the gutters on the corner of my house allow. Well done

[xelasnave]

Nice image Tony.
Would you care to share your star reduction work flow.
Alex

[Startrek]

Alex
Startools V1.7 has the Shrink module which when creating a star mask allows you to tighten , reduce, dim and shrink stars , I use it all the time
Martin

[xelasnave]

Thank you Martin dont forget to put me down for a copy of your book on Astrophotography as no doubt it will be the best out there.
Alex

[Startrek]

Alex,
No the book in Startools

Tony,
Apologies I should pm’d Alex regarding stars
Again a fine effort
M16 is not an easy target for your aperture size
Well done !!
Martin

[Tony Leece]

I am very new to Gimp but this is what i did, hope it is ok Alex.
1st i opened the image in gimp
then tools > selection tools > select by colour
In select by colour i had threshhold set to 45
Then clicked on one of the stars
then select > grow set to 2 then select> feather set to 2 also
then > filters > distorts > Value propagate and change the mode to 'more black'
and that's about it mate.
you can play around with threshhold and grow, feather values

[Tony Leece]

No worries Martin and thanks for the kind comments guys :thumbsup:

[xelasnave]

Thank you Tony and thank you Martin.
Alex

[Tony Leece]

:thumbsup:

[Tony Leece]

I tried to do one of those HOO type palettes on it, looks a bit arty :rofl:


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[AnakChan]

Nice one Tony. Unguided too! The HOO reminds me of the sepia tone film days.

[Tony Leece]

Cheers Sean. :thumbsup: