Triffid - M20 - two long (3600 sec) DSLR shots

[g__day]

I am not displeased with this - stacked two 3600 second shots and one 1200 second shot.

Matt

[Dennis]

Wow - nice work Matt! Were these taken through the C9.25 at F10?

Cheers

Dennis

[multiweb]

The data is truely excellent. :thumbsup: Spot on focus and guiding. Just the processing IMO is a tad harsh. I like a softer touch. Top shot regardless. Looks like you've got PHD tamed now :)

[Matty P]

Very nice indeed. For such long subs the guiding is spot on and some very nice details are showing. :)

Top stuff. :thumbsup:

[renormalised]

Wow...2hr 20min....that's quite a set of exposures there:D

Lots of data and detail. Have to agree with Marc...probably a little hard on the processing but a very very good shot:D

Well done, Matt:D

[Peter Ward]

Grasshopper...you need to move from CMOS to CCD. :)

[AlexN]

That is looking Very nice mate! Guiding looks fantastic! Seems you've got it all nailed! I look forward to another 5~6 subs of that duration! :)

[Craig_L]

Wow! 1 hour subs on a DSLR. That might be a record. Tracking obviously nailed.

[beren]

:thumbsup: Very nice work, all the elements coming together with the challenging focal length and exposure times.....might be related to guide star acquisition but maybe the subject framing is a little off but well done.

[g__day]

Thanks very much for your comments guys,

For interest I imaged this shot below by combining the last 3 nights - in total 11 shots mainly at 20, 30 or 60 minutes (and ensure I took plenty of darks at 1 hour yesterday) put together in DeepSkyStacker and leveled and streched in CS4.

I know my image manipulation has a long learning curve - but I am happy that for my level of gear I am starting to get good signal / noise ratio (relative to my light drenched location) and with a plain Canon 400D (through a Hutech LPS filter).

The guiding is up to where I am fairly happy with it.

Yes Dennis - it's a C9.25 at F10

Peter - I wish - once I've saved up some pennies - that my next wish list item - then I have to work out which CCD best matches my OTA. So for the remainder of this year I'll practice image processing - then I'll graduate to CCD once the Bank balance looks healthier!

So here is a 11 shots comprise around 7 hours of data over three nights.

Beren

Yes the framing was a tad wrong - I only realign every couple of months - its been switch on, issue a goto and 2 minutes later I am imaging. I didn't expect the data and tracking to be that good - was more of an experiment, otherwise I would have nailed the framing and taken some shorter shots, layered it so that the core two / three stars wasn't blown out.

Matt

[Jen]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: nice work Matt keep em coming ;)

[marc4darkskies]

Very nice Matt - great detail!! :thumbsup::thumbsup: A bit of black clipping going on perhaps??

Cheers, Marcus

[Tandum]

One hour canon subs with darks, I'm impressed but I think you have too much time on your hands :rofl:

[g__day]

Robin - too much time - don't tell my wife or my list of jobs will get bigger! :)

The darks (6 of them) I ran at 1pm when I shut everything else down and locked up my little home made astrolab. I figure just cause I'm sleepy it doesn't mean my gear has to rest. Whenever its cloudy I guess I can use the time to take darks of a specific duration and use Deep Sky Stacker to turn them into a master dark tif for that duration.

Marcus,

Again thanks - you're probably right - I'm only now getting to the point where I understand what back clipping is. My processing generally is

Stack, dark frame and flat field and colour balance (align left hand edges of all coulur channels) and up saturation (21%) - in DSS (also I move the luminance curve to coincide with the start of my histograms)
Strech in either MaximDL or CS4
On the really dim zone - clip a bit to remove the worst light pollution and/ or do a heavy Gaussian Blur with CS4
On the dim / mid zone - do a bit of unsharp masking
On the bright zone - minor edits in curves just so things are swamped
Finalise the relative brightness of different zones using a fancy curve in CS4
Shrink and post here if I think its good enough :)

I don't yet use layers in CS4 to more precisely target my filters and processing - so I'm at a really basic stage of learning. If in a year I could do half of what Jase and other manage in CS4 - I'd be delighted!

Matt

[RB]

Very nice result Matthew.
You're guiding is terrific and as you say once you start to get a better grasp of processing the data you'll be turning out some stunners.

When I use DSS I basically save the stacked image straight away and don't use any of the DSS controls, I find them awkward to use.
I simply open the image in CS3 and go from there.

:thumbsup:

[Lester]

Very nice images Matt. Obviously you have not got any mirror flop in the SCT. Tracking is perfect.