M42 - My best yet :)

[AlexN]

Again last night, I had my usual amount of trouble getting guiding to work, after 4hrs with no success I gave it the flick, and ran off a heap of 4 minute unguided shots of M42 and M43.

This has resulted in what I think is my best shot yet.

Details:
Scope: Megrez 102
Camera: QHY8 (Gain: 1 ; Offset: 116)
22x240sec subs
Stacked in DSS, Processing in PS CS3

Thanks for looking.
Alex.

[iceman]

Nice work, Alex. Lovely image. I'd raise the black point a bit to give it more contrast, too.

[jase]

Great work. Flats would go along way in improving the image quality - sorry to state the obvious.

[strongmanmike]

You think this is good now, and it is, well you would be gob smaked if you had used flats, do you take flats? Even rudamentary flats would improve this image, just pointing the scope at a piece of white card illuminated by a diffuse fluro light would make a difference, not an ideal flat but probably enough to remove much of that vignetting.

Even an artificial flat in software would help.

Mike

[multiweb]

Very nice. Did you take these from a relatively dark site? If not try longer exposures and try lowering your offset to let's say 70 to start with. That will considerably lower your sky count.

[AlexN]

Thanks guys... After stretching these I realized straight away that I will need flats... Also would have helped if I remembered to use the field flattener.. :)

Mark, From where I took these, You can't see the milky way, about mag 4~5 is the limit.. Light pollution is paramount.. I'll give lowering the Offset a go.. the background level is something that I struggled with, untill I just said "stuff it... it still looks good."

I will also try raising the black point. since posting the image I have given it a bit of a contrast tweak anyways as it looked a little wishy washy..

Thanks for the comments guys.. :) Hopefully autoguiding will be sorted by the weekend.

[Garyh]

With a few extra tweaks that will really come up a even better! and 4 min unguided geez thats good!
cheers Gary

[AlexN]

Thanks Gary, as far as extra tweaks go, can you point me in the direction of anything other than flats / black point? Im very new to all this and although im coming along pretty quickly any extra info is always appreciated.

[h0ughy]

maybe pixinsightLE could work?

[Tilt]

That's impressive for unguided. I'm lucky to get 120sec without guiding before I detect trails.

PixInsight will help you with the vignetting, a Dynamic Background Extraction will clean it up nicely. Or like others are suggesting, some real flats.

Michael

[RB]

Very nice despite the vignetting.

:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Thanks all for the comments, I am very happy with the image despite the vignetting. I did download Pixinsight LE to try to get rid of it, but Dynamic Background Extraction was not included in LE (or at least, not where any of the tutorials said it would be...)

I'll have another look when I get home from work...

[Craig_L]

Very nice Alex. Nice control on the core for the 240 sec exposure.

[AlexN]

Thanks Craig... I kind of cheated there.. It was late and I forgot to run off 30x30sec exposures... So I re-stacked the 240 sec exposures and stretched them VERY gently, then added them to the fully stretched data using layer masks, adjusted the color balance and tweaked the curves a little more, and it came out very natural looking. :)

[jjjnettie]

That's really nice Alex. Well done.

[Tilt]

Here is a DBE tutorial:
http://pixinsight.com/tutorials/LE/DBE-example/en.html

And here is the PixInsight LE 1.0.2.143 Update:
http://pixinsight.com/download/LE/index.html

Add the update (after you have installed PixInsight LE version 1.0.1.141) and it contains the DBE tool.

Michael

[Matty P]

I agree. A very nice image Alex. Lovely natural colours and lots of fine details showing.

Hurry up and get your autoguiding working because I can't wait to see what you can do with your setup.

:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Matty, Thanks mate.. I'm very keen to see what it can all do also... :D Should have it sorted by the end of this weekend, failing that, my EQDIR will be here in a few days/weeks and then I'll be rocking out with pulseguiding :)

[Octane]

Alex,

Beautiful! Keep it up. :)

Regards,
Humayun

[AlexN]

Thanks Humayun,

I intend to better this image this weekend :) All things going to plan that is... :)

[bluescope]

Here I go tweaking other people's images again .... hope you don't mind Alex .... good data to work with !
GradientXTerminator and slight adjustment of green channel levels with saturation up a little etc.

:thumbsup:

[Jen]

:eyepop: nice pics Alex well done cheers :)

[AlexN]

Thanks Steve, your re-process has come up very nicely.. I'm still working on this one, and have since got it almost to the same point as your go at it.. Im getting happier with it, every minute I spend editing.

Jen, Thanks! :D :D :) :) :D :D

[Bassnut]

Alex, very smick. Steves rendition is even better ;).

And oh the posted res. You really need to improve that with the quality you are achieving now. Build a site (free is easy) or use an image server.

[bluescope]

You had good data to start with Alex and the processing is always the challenge to bring it out .... have fun and post your reprocessed image when you are happy with it .... I look forward to seeing it !

:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Fred, thanks, I agree Steve's reprocess is awesome.. Im working hard to replicate it at full res as we speak..

I have webspace at a few places, and im in the process of designing a site.

[AlexN]

Here we are... High res image link coming soon..

Alex.

[Jen]

:thumbsup::thumbsup: nice Alex

[Hagar]

I can only repeat the comments of everyone else. Do some flats... Otherwise it is by far your best yet.
Well done mate.

[Craig_L]

Nice reprocess Alex but your losing some nebulousity now in the "Running Man".

[bluescope]

The redo is better than original but as Craig says you have lost a lot nebulosity in the process Alex. Are you working with layers when you process .... if not, you should .... it gives much better control over the image. It's all practice and experimentation. I've reposted my tweak along with your redo as an example of what's gone missing. Try layering your redo into your original and blending the two.

:thumbsup: