Southern Pinwheel and Orion

[bloodhound31]

I spent some happy hours in the obs last night.

M83 southern pinwheel
10 x 500 sec

M42 Orion nebula
20 x 90 sec
5 x 10 sec

Skywatcher Black Diamond ED 120 APO on EQ6
Orion Starshoot DSI III
Guided with PHD Skywatcher ED 80 and Orin Starshoot autoguider

Capture and aligned in MaxIm DL Essentials
Processed Photoshop Elements 6

[ChrisM]

Well done Barry; I particularly like the pinwheel, which I'll have to find next time I am observing.

Cheers,
Chris

[lesbehrens]

really good.
les

[renormalised]

Nice shots Barry.....only one thing not quite right with M42 and that it's too red. I checked the histograms for your image and you have a very tight green response. The red and blue histograms are quite broad. So I gave your pic a bit more green, altered the blue and red a bit to darken the background and kill that red tinge. Hope you don't mind the outcome:).

[Ric]

Nice images Barry, very enjoyable.

The Pinwheel definitely has "ooh aah" value, a very nice widefield.

Cheers.

[bloodhound31]

Thanks everyone.

I like your adjustment there RN. :thumbsup: I am still having problems getting my head around processing, but I think I am getting there. Just about every picture I have put out with the new camera, I get replies saying, "too red". I thought I had deliberately got away for the red for this one but obviously not.

It's funny, I got more positive feedback from my pics when they were worse. (DSLR shots) Still trying to figure that out.:screwy:

Baz.:D

[leon]

Ah, top pin wheel Barry ;)nicely captured mate, love those wide field shots.

Leon :thumbsup:

[renormalised]

What length of subs are you running in each colour??. If this occurs with most of your piccies, then your camera is not as sensitive in the green as it is in blue and red. That maybe a function of the filters you're using but it more than likely the CCD in the camera (especially if it's an OSC). What I would do to compensate for that is take more subs in the green, or lengthen the time you take the subs for, maybe reduce the subs for the red and blue. It's a matter of playing around until you get the numbers right:)

If your camera is an OSC, when you stack and then process your pics, check the histograms before you do anything else. If the green is always tighter than the other colours, you can adjust this by stretching histogram. You can do this by changing the output values for the channel in your image and also by moving the sliders about on the histogram itself. I would also adjust the black points for the other channels too. Colour balance is another thing you can adjust which will help with the green channel, by adjusting the amount of each of the colours in the image, so that you get the right mix of RGB.

[bloodhound31]

Thanks RN.:thumbsup: The camera is the Orion Starshoot Deep Sky Imager III, which is a colour CCD. I don't use filters and I am under the impression that one cannot use filters with a colour camera. Is that correct?:shrug:

What can I do about this except use the color balance tools available on MaxIm DL essentials before I take it to photoshop?

Baz.:D

[renormalised]

You wouldn't normally use filters with an OSC, but I've seen some peeps use Ha filters on them to get luminance.

That's about all you can do, but in PS you can still tweak them a little, or a lot, depending on how you want it.

[bloodhound31]

Does OSC stand for Orion Starshoot Camera?

I would love to see an example of what you are talking about. Got any links to such a picture or example?

Thanks heaps for sharing your expertise BTW

Baz.

[CoolhandJo]

I'm pretty sure OSC is refering to a One Shot Colour Camera.

[Hagar]

Very nice images Barry. Orion looks like it has a bit of a colour balance issue but the Galaxy is beautiful. On brighter objects you may need to fiddle a little with your gain and offset settings. I am unsure of DSI capture but if it requires debayering perhaps these settings could be looked at. I had a problem with debayering a QHY8 in Maxim and got very similar colour results. Just a thought.
Nice detail, great tracking and good focus. Well done.

[bloodhound31]

Oh, thanks mate.



Thank you Doug. I will look up debayering.

[Hagar]

Hi baz. Debayering is the process the software uses to create the colour from the bayer matrix overlay on the CCD. I had a lot of problems with Maxim when it came to converting the original files to colour. It may be worth downloading a copy of Nebulosity from Stark Labs and trial it with the debayering tool in it. I found it a much better program to use and the results always seemed better.

Good luck and keep at it.

[bloodhound31]

I stacked the 5 x 10 second subs along with the 20 x 90 second subs in good old DSS.

The result was TOTALLY different. Way more natural looking.

Baz.

[Hagar]

Much nicer result Baz. I had a very similar result when using Maxim. I ended up doing all stacking and debayering in IP3 as I ended with much better results. I think it is something to do with the auto stretch feature in Maxim but I am not sure.