First guided image Eta

[telecasterguru]

Good morning all,
I guided my EQ6 for the first time last night with the Orion Starshooter and it was fantastic. The starshooter was easy to use and tracked beautifully.
I have attached a Jpeg file of Eta Carina taken with my new Canon 1000d through a 200mm Newt. iso400. Imaged in RAW format. Not sure about white balance in the camera.
1 x 600s
2 x 300s
4 x 30s
Also used appropriate darks but not lights.
Aligned and processed a little in GIMP which does not appear to process RAW files.
I have CCDWare Stacker but not exactly sure how it works yet. I do not have PS. I have no idea how to get the RAW files into a form that can be processed by CCDWare and therefore there is obviously a lot of data loss in JPEG with GIMP. There should be a lot more data in the images.
Need all the help I can get to learn processing.
Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Frank

[TrevorW]

Processing RAW files quick and simple download a copy of Deep Sky Stacker

It's free and works

Focus appears slightly off IMO but otherwise no bad

Images can be adjusted using Canon Digital Photo Professional also downloadable free for Canon site

Keep at it

Cheers

[multiweb]

Well done. Guiding's spot on Frank :thumbsup: So is focus. Next thing you want to have a look into is making sure your camera is square in the focuser. Then have look at a coma corrector. All good from there :)

[telecasterguru]

I have uploaded a new image after taking TrevorW's advice and downloading Deep Sky Stacker. It is simple to use and I would recommend whole heartedly. The image speaks for itself. Compare it to the earlier image in my original posting below.
The difference is amazing and it was all done automatically. Just stuck all of the files in, pressed reference and minimum processing.
Thank you TrevorW it is amazing.
This is exactly the same 26 minutes of imaging as the earlier image with, as I said, darks and no flats. I knew there was a lot more data in the images.
Over the moon Frank

[leon]

Frank you are on your way mate, and it dose take quite a while to get this processing down.

It's a pretty big learning curve, as I have found out myself, nice effort though.

Leon

[TrevorW]

Frank post a file around 240k here adjust image size to say 800 x 500 and can see what we can bring out further in PS.

If you like you can send me a bigger file say 1 meg too my personal email PM if you are interested Eta is a great target to start with

Cheers