M17 - Swan Nebula

[En1gma]

Tonight I decided to push out into the 10 minute sub area - But unfortunately Homebush stadium got the better of me. Today I am fighting alot more with noise due to the longer subs

My second serious effort was not as good as my m8 as my focus was a touch off and the target was leading towards the edge of field (flattener is on my christmas list :O) - Here we go, please offer any advise

Subs: 7x10mins | Dark: 6x10 mins

I also decided to do a little spin off and convert the image to B/W and discard some of the colour channels - I reckon it came out nice.:)

Rob

[midnight]

Very nice Rob! I agree with the B&W coming out really good. :thumbsup:

I've been battling with DSS esp with Darks as I've just only started with this whole stacking thing. Do you stack your darks first or just import the whole light and darks and let DSS run with money?

For a light polluted area, you seem to be doing really well.

Keep up the goods!! :D

Cheers,
Darrin...

[p1taylor]

hi rob black and white is realy good.

peter

[batema]

I just put all my lights into picture files and darks into dark files at the same time as I believe DSS makes a master dark and subtracts that from the lights and then stacks them.

Mark

[bmitchell82]

Morning there Rob,

You have definitely captured the data. Though the image is red shifted quite a fair way hence the brightest star there is actually a Yellow star, and the main neck of the swan is actually a white nebula (very strange :D)

What processing software are you using? Photoshop?

If so have a look at your histograms and just for a bit of a baseline look at what colors you are aiming for do a auto color then stretch the bejeebus out of it. This isn't how to process this is just allowing you to see what data you have hidden and a rough color balance. I liken it to focusing you don't know if you have achieved the best focus till you have gone past it then come back to sharp focus, don't be afraid to see whats on the other side because you can always come back!

My work flow generally consists of iterative levels gradually expanding the histogram to fill the full 16bit gamut. then followed up by using delicately placed Curves to start really pulling faint data out while suppressing back ground noise. Also getting your hands on something like Noise ware or Noise ninja just a few that work, will help you with suppressing dark and color noise and smoothen up those subs!

Also what kind of equipment are you utilizing?

Brendan