M15 first picture

[Emanuele]

HI all,

This is my first ever image with the CN212! :)

M15 from Weston, Florida.
Takahashi CN212 @ 2630 mm
Takahashi EM200 - unguided
Canon 40D

20sec X 10 @1600
20sec x 10 @ 800
20sec x 10 @ 400

I have no idea what I am doing for post-processing! I just did a quick post-processing using Nebulosity and some actions thorugh Noel's Carboni! As you can see I have noise in the background, and the Cn212 needs collimation, I believe.
How do I remove that noise in the background?

Image acquired with Equinox through its image aquisition!

The image file is big! (4.5mb)
http://www.backyardskies.com/BackyardSkies/Various.html

Comments and help are really appreciated!
Emanuele

[AlexN]

Looks good for a first go mate! :) Well done...

Longer exposures are the key to more detail... Spend a bit of time on drift alignment to get your polar alignment as close to perfect as possible.

The EM200 is capable of fairly long unguided exposures, provided your alignment is spot on..

As it is, your 20sec subs show no~little drift, next time try to stretch them out a little longer. say 30~40 seconds.. Experiment untill you have noticable drift.

Also, with shorter exposures, the more you stack, the better.. When I was unguided I'd do 40~50x 30~40sec exposures.. This helped, but nothing helps reduce noise like longer exposures.

Good going for your first image!
Alex

[leon]

I wish my first attempt was that good, nice effort indeed.

leon

[alphajuno]

That's very good. Much better than my M15. You can try using levels in Photoshop Elements or similar to get rid of evenly distributed noise. Sometimes it doesn't work as well as other techniques and is kinda harsh but it's easy and helps sometimes too. I just click on a noisy non-star portion with the black eyedropper.

Shrinking the image size in a large photo works too - you can try that with your big file...

I can't take long exposures but, like Alex says, that's what works best.

[xelasnave]

Excellent first effort..you can give up the day job and do this professionally with such a good start into astro photography.
alex

[atalas]

Nice glob and a good effort...focus a bit soft though.

[Kirkus]

I love seeing "first" images. When I saw my first image, the excitement was palpable. I wish mine had been as good as this!

I'm not going to offer any advice because I'm nowhere close to where most other IISers are. But I know how it feels to get your first!

Nice job, Emanuele!

[Emanuele]

Thank you very much all! :) Really appreciate the kind words!
I gave my Pentax 105 a go a few days ago and I will post the results on new threads :)