Antares region widefield

[alan meehan]

Thought i would have a go at antares in widefield 1 hour 22 min f/2.8.processing in wide field was harder than i thought .Please throw some helpful comments at me.

[montewilson]

Nice effort - sharp too, but did you take it under dark sky? It seems to have been affected by light pollution. Don't fret - it's quite a nice shot.

[prokyon]

What equipement did you use? How many lights and darks?
I am very interested in that, because I did my first pic of this region some weeks ago.

http://www.prokyon.startime.at/Bilder/M4.jpg
350d mod. with Canon 200 EF, ISO 800 2x300s

This was just a test, I will try it again. But I`m still waiting for better weather.... :(

Maybe we can help each other with tips and experiences.

[marc4darkskies]

What processing did you do Alan? Do you have Photoshop. Some gradient removal and some layered stretching, contrast enhancement and saturation may give you a surprise. I think there's a tidy image hiding in that data.

To demonstrate - and I hope you don't mind - I did a 5 minute quick & dirty on it and cropped it a bit. With more time and effort you could easily do better than this.

Cheers, Marcus

[dcalleja]

Some good data in there. The extra photoshopping really brought out more of the detail. The colours in this region are pretty amazing

[h0ughy]

Alan took it on an EQ6 guided with a St80 side by side holding my modded 20D with a 135mmL f2 lens (stopped to f3.5) two minute shots. he probably stacked the lot of 41 images but looking at the data i think he has about 17 usable ones that aren't that affected by light pollution.

we really wanted to test the camera/lens combo out as this is a target i wish to image at SPSP in a few weeks time. Thankfully Alan graciously volunteered to test the setup (his is permanently polar aligned LOL). That lens is so good, i will never part with it:D

we were also testing a new flats setup but unfortunatelly it has led to banding in the flats images - need to iron that one out.

So Al has done everything and i think given the location it is a great image - I look forward to more:thumbsup:

[alan meehan]

HI Marcus just amazing what the extra proccessing will do,i do have
photoshop still learning i will give it ago thanks.
Prokyon
i was using 20d mod camera on top of a eq6 .40x2 min shots 30 darks and flats.
Monte most certainly taken under light polluted skies
thanks for the comments
cheers Alan

[h0ughy]

I dropped the data over to Scott Alder this morning to see what he could come up with - hope you dont mind scott but i will directly quote your email:

"Howdy
Gee the data is excellent. Pin sharp focus and tracking. I didnt use all the subs though as the they were light polluted at the start so I started from where they looked not too bright, ended up being the last 40 subs. Processed with darks flats and offsets. With Iris I find I dont need a heap of darks flats and offsets so I ended up using 10 darks and flats, and 3 offsets. I put them all through Iris and let it do its thing. I use an alingment method where Iris draws 3 small boxes (300 pixels each) atound the edges, and aligns with those to ensure no field rotation.

I didnt need to use Gradient xterminator, as its better with isolated objects like galaxies rather then large patches of nebulosity. Instead I used Iris's automatic gradient removal, which seems to work best for removing a gradient that steadily increases from one side to the other. I then used the white command to neutralize the background colour, then finished it off in Photoshop

Again, its damm good data, and an excellent image result :) Scott "

[Lester]

That is an outstanding image Alan. Processing an image is a real art in itself.

[bloodhound31]

Alan, you have done really well and captured HEAPS of good data, well tracked to boot.

Processing lets me down big time and is the second half of the battle after focus, alignment and guiding.

Baz.

[sheeny]

Well done!

Great team effort... Houghy's hardware, Al's capture and a bit of tornado processing...Wow!:thumbsup:

Al.

[strongmanmike]

The Three Novocastrian Musketeers :thumbsup:

Nice work boys

d'Artagnian :P

[h0ughy]

LOL yep team effort.

[cruiser]

Thats a lovely shot Alan. Well done.

[iceman]

Nice work team! Lovely image.

[Tamtarn]

There's a lot of good data in the image Alan as seen with Marcus's demonstration. Well done :thumbsup:

[Hagar]

Nice end result Guys. An interesting area of the sky with quite pronounced colour changes but also quite subtle detail captured and retained.
Well done team.

[davidpretorius]

boy that is nice.

I seem to remember Humanyan producing a similiar beautiful one of this area last year?

Stunning :)

[cookie8]

Nice capture Alan despite from light polluted sky. Love the colour & so rich in contrast.

[Bassnut]

Nice work on the repros there, excellent work.

AND WTF?????????, what happened there with Davids post with the huge image, never seen that before?

[jase]

Very nice result. Good to see some collaborative imaging. Needs to be more of it IMO. Its a quick way to learn.

[prokyon]

Great result! To learn image processing is a neverending story... ;)

[RB]

Nice work guys.

:thumbsup:

[spacezebra]

Congrats David and Al - what great team work.

Cheers Petra d.

[h0ughy]

well it is Alan's work:thumbsup:

[venus]

Alan you have captured an amazing image there, the dark dust lanes are very clear.

Great work

[tornado33]

Yep there was plenty of data to work with. The subs were all aligned well throughout (all good tracking) and well focussed.
Scott