M8 and M20 reworked.

[rcheshire]

Here (http://www.synergous.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/FinalView.jpg) :question:

[Paul Haese]

A good attempt but a few issues that you would need to correct.

Aside from the tilt issue in your image with the elongated stars in the corners, shimming can fix that, there are minor processing issues.

First of all you image is black clipped. Most people when learning to process end of up doing this for two main reasons. Firstly, because they are trying to hide noise in the background because the image is not exposed for long enough or there are not enough subs. Secondly, people clipped because they don't know about some of the features in photoshop that help prevent this. Try using the shadows and highlights tool under image adjustment or the curves function to lighten the image. That will help. Be careful to use these sparingly.

Next, your stars are basically devoid of colour. There are thousands of yellow stars and some prominent blue stars. This comes down to saturation.

Try taking a look at these links for help on processing.

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/TOC_DIG.HTM

http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/Presentations.html

Take your time on learning the tools of processing. Gathering good data is just part of the equation and processing is the other part.

I look forward to seeing your images improve over the coming months and year.

[rcheshire]

Thanks Paul. Very much appreciated. I've considered everything from collimation, to a dodgy field flattener, but given the localisation of the elongation it can only be tilt.

[ChrissieBee]

Hi Folks.

I recently joined IceInSpace (3 days ago to be exact) and it was purely accidental. Took photos of the crescent moon last Friday (the 13th) and wanted to know in particular which planets were those four bright lights around the moon. Googled it and saw this forum.

I am a lover of the moon and the night sky and take gazillion photos of it from time to time. I've never done sky/star gazing or photography using a telescope though but now my interest has been stimulated (very dangerous when that happens!). Now, i'm interested in doing astrophotography but don't know which telescope would be appropriate. I've done a bit of reading online for the last day but still not sure which one I should get. Would greatly appreciate if the experts out there can give me a heads up on what's what. I'm after a middle range telescope that I can use for astrophotography. Would be great too if it can be used during the daytime to take photo's of other faraway stuff but if not possible, then i'll settle with the one I can use for the night sky.

Appreciate whatever help you guys are willing to dish out!

Cheers!

Chris

[Octane]

Rowland,

That's a great effort.

I agree entirely with Paul. The other thing is that your nebulae are over-saturated. What were your image details? Camera/guiding/exposure/scope, etc?

Christine, dangerous slipperyslope, indeed! How much money are you willing to spend? We'll get it out there at the onset: the telescope isn't the most important part of an astrophotographer's setup. The single most important piece of kit required to make nice images is a mount. A strong mount. A good mount. A sturdy mount. See where I'm going? : )

The telescope/camera comes afterwards.

H

[luigi]

Agree with Paul too, blacks just too clipped and for some reason the sat is too high on the nebula and too low on the stars.
These things are a processing challenge!

[rcheshire]

Thanks H and Luigi.

Sorry for the late reply - away up North for work. Inky skies in the tropics, different altogether.

The frames are a reworked set taken earlier this month - 10 x 3 mins and 2 x 5 mins. Not nearly enough (time constraints).

Hardware = ED80, Canon Kiss F (1000D), iso 400, no guiding (have plans to implement in the future). Preprocessing and post processing with Pixinsight.

Agreed, the black point is clipped, the stars are desaturated and the nebula are over saturated. I know how this happened, but it's a little difficult to explain - many steps involved - overcooked.

Christine - H is right. The mount is the most important piece of equipment - then go from there. That is the best advice for AP. Depends on budget of course, but quality second hand is a good way to go - IMHO.

Rowland.

[rcheshire]

Here again (http://www.synergous.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/integration.jpg) :question:

[irwjager]

Hey Rowland,

I'm joining the party late :P Looking much better!
I had a quick go at trying to enhance your latest image a bit more. I was able to get rid of most of the elongated stars in the corners by using the "Lens Distortion" filter in The GIMP, using 50 for the "Main" parameter and 25 for the "Y Shift" parameter.
I also used a new (unreleased) version of StarBright (new vastly improved algorithm) to pump up the brightness and detail. I'd be happy to send and/or post my result with your permission.

[rcheshire]

Ivo, please do - would love to see the results...

[irwjager]

The lens distortion corrected (and brightened) result is here (http://siliconfields.net/rowland/rowland_m8.jpg). Personally I would be starting to get fairly content with this result if it came from my gear! :)

[rcheshire]

Ivo, the lens distortion plug-in has done a fantastic job. I think that using Star Bright early during processing would avoid some of the milkiness that develops.

It would be handy before working on the wavelets, which is what Pixinsight seems to do. Particularly for data challenged images. Sqeezing lemons!

[irwjager]

Gotta love The GIMP! (wish it had 16-bit processing though...)

You're right actually. I won't hijack this thread to preach about the virtues of the new upcoming version of StarBright :P, but that's exactly where the new version will be coming in handy.

Data challenged/noisy images is the new version's specialty :)

[rcheshire]

Is there a way to export GIMP plugins to Cinepaint?

There is another tool fotoxx which does HDR among other things and handles 48 bit.

[irwjager]

Not sure about exporting GIMP plug-ins to Cinepaint, but I've started using
Krita (http://krita.org/), which has high bit depth support AND has a lens correction plug-in. Definitely worth a look!