Successful session M16 - Getting better.

[[1ponders]]

Much happier. The mount and new equipment worked well tonight (still need to get different guide rings) Any processing suggestions more than welcome

[ballaratdragons]

Great job Paul.

I like the detail in the centre of the neb!! You picked it up excellently (is that a word?).

[[1ponders]]

:lol: If you've used it Ken then it must be. I was going back through the originals and found a well placed satellite. That made two for the night. I had one go through the eyepiece while looking for the Helix and this one.

[seeker372011]

very nice work indeed

Great shot

[gbeal]

Yep, it's coming together, well done.

[Dennis]

Hi Paul

That is a very nice image of M16 - great job! What were the capture details; exp, # of stacked images, etc.

Cheers

Dennis

[Robby]

Ahhh, that's more like it Paul... Stunning!
There'll be no stopping you now!
Cheers
Rob

[[1ponders]]

Capture settings and Equipment
Meade 8" SCT with Orion 80ED gudiescope on Losmandy GM-8.
Polar aligned and guided using ToUcam and K3CCDTools V2.
Canon 300D and Meade 6.3 focal reducer. Focused using DSLR Focus and JMI NGF-CM focuser.
6 X 5 min @ ISO800 and 1 X 10 min @ISO 800, image capture controlled using StarMate.

Originally taken as RAW converted to jpeg and stacked in Registax. Only levels processing and cropping in PS. Originally processed the RAWs in Iris with darks and flats, but I wasn't happy with the result, still haven't got the knack of that prog yet. The colour potential and detail were great but it seemed to put a lot of noise and artifacts into the image that I couldn't remove. Might have to bite the bullet and pay for Noiseware.

[[1ponders]]

This is the Iris image after autolevels in Photoshop. Notice the vertical streaks through the image. Not sure what to do with it. The unprocessed Iris image looked like it had a heap of potential. I followed Jim Solomons Cookbook for the Iris processing.

[Robby]

I can't see any vertical streaks Paul..?) But I do think you've pushed the processing a bit too far, but then again, the jpeg compression might be the culprit.
This has gotta be one of the bset M16 shots I've seen in awhile. Top stuff.
Cheers

[beren]

:thumbsup: Top image Paul , i like the first example the best, ive tried M16 a few times and i find it hard to get anything half as much as what you got

[atalas]

Yep got good detail Paul !

Louie :eyepop:

[Mick]

Beautiful image Paul.

[[1ponders]]

Well I guess it just goes to show how you can tart up a poor image by converting it and compressing it to a jpeg :P don't worry it was really obvious in the PSD image. I'll crop a section of the original and try to keep the compression to a minimum