Triffid Nebula - Are my shots any better?

[toryglen-boy]

I know you have all seen the Triffid until your blue in the face (and red for that matter) but here is a pic i took, while trying to hone my craft ... about 20 mins ago?

What do you think? is my guiding any better etc.?

many thanks

:)

[strongmanmike]

Hi Duncan

It's hard to critique imgaes at that size, it is full of jpeg artifacts and is way to small to see anything well. You need to get on to a web site like PBase or Flicker et al where you can display your images at a much larger size.

Having said that it looks like a nice image, the stars appear pretty round and the colours are ok, some will say it's a bit to blue but I like blue, it is the nicest of the colours to cast over a deep sky object IMO.

Mike

[dugnsuz]

Is that a single sub Duncan?
It's a very nice image - guiding looks good, some eggy stars top left, but that might be ED80 coma? Hard to tell from a reduced size pic - cropped or just reduced in size? I imagine it's the latter.

That is very nice though - I'm sure you're just being a modest, canny Scot, but you must be pretty pleased with that image.

A big step in the right direction Duncan.

Doug

[toryglen-boy]

Hi guys, thanks for the comments.

Yeah, its a single sub of 8mins, i am messing around with times etc, finding my feet. I am finding that anything over 4mins, starts getting a woefull amount of hot pixels so, but anytime i stax images i endup with this tiff, that looks woefully over exposed, so i am seeing how far i can push it.

any advice on that score, greatly recieved.


:)

[Alchemy]

pretty good for a single sub.

part of the key to deep sky imaging is lots of subs,

even a stack of 5 min subs say 6 will tease out more detail than a single 8 min one. So its time to put that technical expertise you have now got to the next level.

clive

[jjjnettie]

Looks good to me Duncan. The colour is spot on. As was mentioned, the noise will be subdued with more subs.

[Omaroo]

That's a nice shot there Duncan. Good colour to my taste anyway - and "taste" is what it's all about. I'm not sure there are rigid rights and wrongs. For a single frame of 8 minutes it shows that your equipment and guiding seem to be working well.

Mike has no idea what he's talking about - so you can just ignore him.

:whistle:

[multiweb]

Looks great but a higher-res version would be better to have a look at the points you've questioned?

[toryglen-boy]

TBH, when i asked "getting better?" i really meant the tracking and the focus, i spent a great of deal of time over the weekend ironing out the bugs, one of which is the spirit level on my EQ6, that says level, when its really way out !!

i know stacking images is the way to go, but TBH, when i stack iamges i just end up with this utter bright mess, that i cant seem to make much sense from.

i guess quitting JPG's and working in RAW is the best way forward.

thanks for the kind words people, and more comments gratefully recieved.

;)

[Omaroo]

Duncan - have you set stacking to "additive" rather than "mean" or "average"?




Yep - the Chinese mounts are notoriously innacrate when it comes to the spirit level bubble and altitude marking. I know of one which was reading 8 degrees out in altitude. 8 degrees! LOL! Use a spirit level and inclinometer - and then do a proper drift alignment... :)

[toryglen-boy]

Thats a very good call, and its at this point that i raise my hands, and say i have no idea about using DSS to stack images.

now i feel like an eejit !

:lol:

[orestis]

Thats a very nice shot especially because it has colour contrast and no noise.Great pic over all. good work

[Hagar]

Nice image Duncan, Most requirements look pretty good although at this size it is dificult to be critical. The blue colour is a bit much, try to balance it up and it will be much better.

[multiweb]

Yeah you'll have to start shooting in raw fits and look into calibration frames too. It's better to get stuck right into it at the beginning. It makes a world of difference to your data and once you do it you'll wonder why you didn't earlier. If you post a 1:1 picture it's easier to see soft focus or tracking otherwise hard to judge on a reduced size & compressed format.