Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, M83.

[starfinder]

Hi all.

I've been sitting on some of this data for a while and would now like to share it with you.

It's 3 hrs of data from my (lost) Takahashi FS128 and my new Tak TOA130, collected in an SBIG STL11000M camera: RGB and some L, 10 and 20min subs combined and processed in CCDStack and Photoshop CS4.

Problem was I just did not know enough about processing to process it to my satisfaction. Many thanks to Martin Pugh for giving me much valuable advice on how to get more out of the data. :thumbsup: Much more to my liking.

Astrophotography and image processing for me will always be a work in progress..........:)

Russ

[duncan]

Very nice Russ.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[renormalised]

Nice shot, Russ:)

Like the colours:)

[cybereye]

I like the colours - so vibrant and interesting. The picture really shows the old yellow stars in the centre of the galaxy with the younger blue stars and pink nebulae in the arms. Love it!!!

Cheers,
Mario

[strongmanmike]

Lovely rich colours Russ :thumbsup:

Mike

[Ric]

Fantastic capture Russ

As mentioned the colours are wonderful.

cheers

[spearo]

Lovely
well done
frank

[PeterM]

Nice indeed, even have the 2 little fellas (galaxies) in there!
Now I wonder does this image have a supernova in it? This above average (6 recorded to date) supernova producing galaxy is well worthy of checking regularly. You have done all the hard work in getting a great image, who knows you might get lucky!

http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/messier-objects/messier-83/

Congrats!

PeterM.

[gregbradley]

Overall very nice but the stars seem too large. I suspect your focus was off a bit, close but not exact. The stars with a TOA should be tighter than that.

You can compensate by doing some deconvolution on the master LRGB subs - maybe 80 iterations, positive constraint in CCDstack.

Do you use a robofocus or similar? Also focus with an APO can shift with temperature changes. Different scopes have different sensitivities to focus shift and temperatures.

Greg.

[Martin Pugh]

A fine result this time round Russ.

We did discuss focus and those slightly soft stars, just as Greg has pointed out. However, you have done a fine job.

cheers
Martin

[telecasterguru]

Russ,

I am impressed.

Frank

[starfinder]

Everyone. Thank you for your very positive and helpful comments. I'm reassured that I'm heading in the right direction through this maze of technology and number crunching! :thanx: