Ngc3372

[Insane Climber]

Hello all:welcome:

Just another noob pic from me. Looking for advice again.
This pic is 44 x 30sec exposures at ISO 400, unguided. Taken with an Olympus e-300 8" Newt and an HEQ5 pro. I have been working on the Photoshop trick to mask stars in one layer and adjust color channels to bring out nebulously I then blend another layer of pin sharp stars over top. My problem is i am starting to get very unnatural looking pics that look nice but do not give an accurate representation of what is real. Please advise?

Cheers in advance
Jas:P

1st pic is 44stacked images, second and third are useing the method i mentioned above

[bluescope]

Hi Jason ... the first thing I would suggest is that iso400 is too slow for a 40 sec exposure. Try going to at least iso800 and see how things pan out.
Also try and get a better polar alignment, you have a fair bit of movement in your stars in this image ... maybe cut your exposures to 30 seconds. Stack your images in a program like DeepSkyStacker ... it's free and allows you to do basic processing before going to PS for a final adjustment.

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

:thumbsup:

[Insane Climber]

Thanks for the tips Steve. I will give that deepskystacker a try tonight. ISO800 seems to give a lot of noise with my camera, I new there was a reason it was so cheap. Not to worry though I'm just learning. As for alignment, gee that has been a hard thing to learn, i keep getting things back to front and round the wrong way. Its all good fun though.