M8 and M20 in one field

[batema]

Hi,

Have just spent 3 days at an astronomy workshop at Toowoomba USQ and spent Saturday night at their observatory at Mt Kent. Great three days.
In very windy conditions took these through our ED 80 Skywatcher and guided with W/O petzvall 66 on EQ6 Pro mount. ISO 800 through Canon 400d unmod with 6 X 5 Min lights and 5 X 5 Min darks stacked and processed in DSS and finished of using GIMP.

All comment welcome.

Mark:)

[strongmanmike]

Well squeezed in Mark, all looks quite nice to me.

I might suggest experimenting with backing off the contrast a tiny bit and upping the background brightness a tad perhaps..?...but you may have already tried this and prefer it this way :thumbsup:...nicely done regardless!

Did the astronomy workshop cover image processing?

Mike

[batema]

Yes it did Mike. the presenter showed people how you can use Photoshop to stack images but did not go into anything in depth. My mate and I are learning throughtrial and error. When in GIMP i BOOSTED THE CURVES TRYING NOT TO BLOW OUT THE STARS (Caps lock off) and then increased the view to 200% and then went to the levels and clicked the eyedropper on the lowest black and clicked on a dark area of the picture. I agree now that It could be a little lighter. Thanks Mark

[Alchemy]

Nailed a lot of H/Alpha for an unmodded camera. sounds like an interesting experience the 3 days hope it helps produce the goods.

[drmorbius]

Nice image :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Just queezed them in nicely. Cool shot :thumbsup:

[batema]

Hi,
Have reprocessed from original stacked and processed in DSS using Gimp to lighten the background. I think it looks better than the original but maybe has brought out too much blue around M20???? Is that a problem.
Thanks
Mark

[gregbradley]

M20 has that much blue reflection nebula around it. Not always seen in images but from a nice dark site, good optics and long enough exposure it comes out.

Greg.