M47

[TheDecepticon]

After a hell of a fight with PHD and its ridiculous tracking idiosyncrasies which it seems to exhibit from time to time, I finally got to image something. It was 1am, I was tired and had to get up at 7am for work, so 10x60sec on M47 with flats and bias frames. I tried to really go for shape, size, colour and background. I know it isn't as exciting as other stuff, but I must admit that I like imaging clusters.

http://cid-10df761f0508a820.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Astrophography/M47.JPG

Thanks for looking.:thanx:

Oh, N200 and QHY8,
Neb2 and PHD,
DSS and PS CS3:rolleyes:

[TrevorW]

Nicely done Graham good star colour and guiding looks spot on

[lacad01]

That is a top shot :thumbsup:

[Hagar]

Very nice Graham, guiding looks good. I wish I could get the star colour you are getting here but then again my exposure time is probably quite a bit longer. Something I will have to work on.

[StarGazing]

Great shot Graham :eyepop:

Alex.

[TheDecepticon]

Thanks Alex, sometimes a "quickie" is the best!!:lol:



Thanks Doug! I'm actually going to start taking some quick shots of my objects in future to capture some of the colour and overlay that like a layer mask to try to produce more colour in longer subs. Has this been tried, do you know?:shrug:



Cheers, it isn't a Gendler, but I like it!:thanx:



Thanks Trevor, considering PHD was just doing its own thing, which is why I kept to 60sec subs.:D

[AlexN]

Nice shot mate..

Yes, layering in shorter exposures to reveal star colours is a tried a tested method.. It works incredibly well provided its done well.. your best bet is to layer the short subs over the long subs, set the layer blending mode to either colour or soft light, create a "hide all" layer mask. Select the Hide All mask, then with a white paint brush of the right size with soft edges, systematically go through the image clicking on the stars that require a colour boost. this reveals the colour from the short sub star where the long exposure star is saturated.. Once you're done, select the layer (not the hide all mask, just the short exposure layer) apply a slight median blur to soften things up a little bit, and increase the saturation to taste...

To get the desired results you may have to then play with that layers opacity a little...

The method works really well, and when done well, is absolutely seamless. It really pays to spend a bit of time adjusting the brush size on a star by star basis, the closer the paint brush is to the size of the star, the better your results will be.

[TheDecepticon]

Hi Alex! Thanks for that, gonna copy and paste that to note pad and save it.
Cheers.:thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Superb shot. Pinpoint and great star colours. Nice work. :thumbsup:

[Geoff45]

Nice and subtle. Someone told me not to bother shooting this one, but after looking at this pic I think it's clearly worth a go.

[telecasterguru]

Very nice image. I like to image clusters. I don't think it is done enough.

Frank

[TheDecepticon]

Thank you, Sir!!:D



It is actually very nice. And a nice sight under dark skies. Love to see an image of yours to compare.:thumbsup:



Cheers, Frank. I agree very much. It will be something I'm going to do more of.:)