M83- Southern Pinwheel Galaxy

[leinad]

Brain wasnt workin on the night. Couldnt get focus to start with, guiding was giving me troubles, etc.. :screwy:
In the end I shocked myself with thinking I'd taken shorter exposures and used a lower ISO setting.
Definitely going to attack this one in darker skies.

From LP Perth suburbia;
Canon 350 Baader UV/IR modded, 8" Newt

12 * 6min/ISO1600 lights
20 darks and bias, no flats

[AlexN]

Very Nice Daniel!! Showing great detail, noise seems very well controlled..

Good going!
Alex.

[cruiser]

Great image, especially from the suburbs.

[leon]

yep have to agree, top shot indeed.

Leon

[leinad]

Thanks for your encouraging comments gents!
I was very suprised that 6min ISO1600 didnt produce too much noise on the night, whereas it has before(but that was a long time ago). More to learn and more practice needed.
The night was quite cool ~ 13-15 Celsius.
Hope to image M83 some more and stack more data.

Cheers

[AlexN]

I think what saved you on the noise issue was the fact that you got quite a few subs, and even more darks... Proper calibration/reduction via darks/bias/flats is the key to great images.. Something that I unfortunately took a very long time to learn... I never used calibration frames for so long, and now I always wonder how much better the images could have been with use of good data reduction..

I look forward to seeing you add some more data to this shot! :) should be a ripper!

[leinad]

Yeah, the additional darks removed 'alot' of noise. There was still a bit of vignetting around the galaxy that made it hard to adjust curves and levels; not sure how to tackle that part as yet.

[spearo]

good shot
nice detail in the spiral arms
frank

[bluescope]

Good effort ... the only thing I would comment is the dust lanes in the spiral are jet black in your image when I think they have a fair bit of red in them for the most part ( based on images of other astrophotographers, my own included ) so this may be from your processing when compensating for LP.

Keep at it mate !

:thumbsup: