My best M20 effort with the 6 incher

[Garyh]

Hi again everyone,
Here is one I am very happy with taken about mid last week under very clear and steady skies. :)
It was also very chilly hence lower noise and PHD guided extra well for me.
Image is 20 x 260 sec at iso 800 with my modded 300D. I must admit the old 300D still holds out pretty well in the cold but hopefully later I can upgrade to a newer DSLR.
Done some noise reduction in PixInsight and some light wavelet deconvolution then adjusted levels, contrast color balance etc in PS.
About a hours processing and fiddling all up to get it as it is..
Very happy with the final image, much better than my attempts last year! :D
Image reduced to 75% of original and cropped for posting. Still had to compress to 50% to get under the 200k limit but still looks pretty good..

All comments most welcome....:thumbsup:
CS Gary

[AlexN]

Beautiful shot Gary.

You must be very happy, especially considering the shot was taken using the scope made from your own labours!

Very impressive.

[renormalised]

Nicely done, Gary. Good colour and your stars are nice and round.

[jase]

A ripper image Gary. Processing and colours look spot on. Well done.

[iceman]

Wow Gary, I love your work. that's a ripper.

That 6" newt of your has delivered some very fine images. I'll take it from you when you finish your 8" :)

[marc4darkskies]

You've gotta be happy with that!! A fine image Gary! :thumbsup: Great colour, excellent detail and composition.

Cheers, Marcus

[rogerg]

Excellent image, no doubt about it :thumbsup:

[RB]

How Good Is That !!!

Wow Gary excellent work.
The colours and detail are beaut.

This cold weather certainly helps with the noise too. :thumbsup:

Do you just set PHD to auto or do you tweak it for your mount?
The guiding is spot on.

[peter_4059]

Very nice Gary. Plenty of work has gone into that.

Well done.

[Ric]

A lovely image Gary, very nice in all aspects. Colour and detail look spot on in my books.

Great work.

Cheers

[tornado33]

Great shote there. Is that full frame, its nice and big for a 6 inch scope
yes the giding is spot on
Scott

[h0ughy]

great shot, and the star colours are fantastic

[Garyh]

Thankyou Alex, The scope didn`t come out too bad for a homemade job!
At least I can say the mirrors a good one!...:thumbsup:



Many thanks renormalised....:)



Thanks Jase...:thumbsup: had to tweek the color balance a bit as I seem to be getting highlights with more blue than they should?
Still working on that?
cheers Gary



cheers Mike!..:thumbsup: lol...hopefully by the end of the year the 8" will be done and the 6" has to find a new home ...:)



Yes Markus I am quiet happy with it..:), my best so far.
Might reprocess it as there is still some noise in the darker areas but thats me being fussy!
cheers Gary



Many thanks Roger! glad you had a peek...:thumbsup:



Thanks Andrew..:) yeap the cold really makes the difference in noise levels and really affects the final image as to detail etc..
With PHD I changed the aggressiveness to 80 and Movement to .5 pixel
Also with some experimenting my G-8 does better on .5x than .2x
cheers Gary



Thankyou Peter, very much appreciated :D



Aways a pleasure Ric!.....:thumbsup:



Thanks Scott, I did crop the image a bit as it didn`t compress too well full frame. Would be close to half a full frame. Not quiet the resolution as the 10" but not bad for a little newt.
thanks again Gary...:)



Thanks Houghy, yes I always like to get those star colors nice and bright.
cheers...:)

Thanks everyone for looking and commenting..
Now another 4-5 images to catch up on processing...;)
CS Gary

[richardo]

Well done on this Gaz,
colour looks very good and stars are beautifully round.
You have the Newt dialed in nicely.

Just one thing and this is imo of course, I'd just back off from the noise reduction a tad. I think your loosing a bit of crispness. The tell tale sign is with the background looking a bit too fuzzy.
Try masking the stars and applying noise reduction only to the background and just a little less.

Other than that, cool image.

All the best
Rich

[EzyStyles]

damn fine image gary. well done.

[sjastro]

Very fine image Gary.

Regards

Steven

[strongmanmike]

Yes a very good effort that Gary. Plenty of interesting details to scan.

MIke

[Garyh]

Thanks Rich, Eric, Steven and Mike for the comments :)
I always try to do the least noise reduction I can Rich, but sometimes I might go overboard or not enough....I fine line!
thanks Guys :thumbsup:

[Tamtarn]

Terrific image once again Gary. You sure get the most out of your 'you beaut' 6" astrograph