M 17 'Swan/lobster Nebula.

[hotspur]

Hi Folks.

I was up late last night,testing my Orion SSAG,which I got up and running,and had my Canon 50 D taking a few star cluster images,to check for star trails.I felt reasonably pleased-considering it was my first ever use in operating SSAG.The moon set at midnight,and I took a few more test images of M17.I did have camera focused with batnov mask,as I intended to check guiding,but took this image just to see how the 50D and all the cables went.

It is a 4 minute single frame at 400iso.I have worked raw image in CS5 mainly curves.I did not spend a great time doing this.But thought the image was not too bad,considering I have not been able to do any DSI for two years (it rains a lot in QLD,and working ten hours days up until recently .)

Thanks for looking.Chris

[hotspur]

Here is another version of the image,may be this one might be more to people's liking.I have not done any AP for two years.

[multiweb]

That's a cool pic Chris. :thumbsup:You need more data but you got the colors right. It's not an easy one in RGB. Looks great in Ha though. Still to get a decent one myself.

[DavidTrap]

Looks good Chris - guiding certainly seems to be working well (finally)!!!!

You've got a small amount of coma out to the periphery, but the central stars are nice and tight.

DT

[Ross G]

Very nice photo Chris.

I like the colour in the stars....a natural look.


Ross.

[hotspur]

Thank you Ross,I too prefer a 'natural' look,I had one chap also say he liked the 'black' back ground.I prefer not to have very large amounts of nebulosity.As I feel the object then becomes to look like something I am unfamiliar with.I am happy to take an image and have it look similar to what I see with my eye through a larger size telescope.Cheers Chris