Eta Carina

[JohnH]

Just practicing on a moonlit night, have my FR in an working, focusing via the PC and tracking with guidedog. First image is a stack of 6*30s shots, more to come - too late to process now...

[matt]

That looks nice and clear on my screen John.

You've got to be happy with that considering the lack of processing etc?

Well done

[[1ponders]]

Sharp as and a nice shot John. Looking forward to watching your learning curve and what you can do with this camera. :thumbsup:

[tornado33]

Yep, the tracking and focus look good. Try going up to 5 or 10 mins per shot when the moon is gone , I think you will get impressive results.

[JohnH]

Still playing with guiding 3 min shot this time...

[ving]

love the second one!!!! :D

[[1ponders]]

Great looking shot John. Taking nothing away from the skill around here, but boy you 20D guys have gotten onto a fantastic camera there.

[Itchy]

Hi John
Your shots show a lot of potential. Very crisp focus and great tracking. It looks like you have the capture sorted out. However, if I may offer some constructive criticism:
The histogram of your images displays a typical clipped shape, with data bunched up on the left edge of the graph. What this means is that there is some faint detail that you have clipped off the image. Visually, this means a very dark background which is hiding some detail. The histogram ideally should begin at zero on the left hand side and then sharply rise to a peak. The Eta Carina area is very bright, and we should be seeing a lot more in your image. Keep an eye on your histogram as you make adjustments. Are you taking these shots as RAW?

I hope I'm not coming across too harsh. I don't mean to be. Processing is more that half the battle!

Cheers

[JohnH]

Itchy...that is why I post - to learn from and encourage others to do the same.

I struggled with this one I must say - I had in camera NR on - I would be curious to see what others can make of it - no flats taken and it's a single shot - when I try to push for the fainter details I see the noise come out - plus the background moonlight and light pollution don't help. I am N of Sydney so shooting into the glow for Eta C. I have attached the best unproced version I can mange as a zip. It was shot as a RAW, converted to TIFF with the Canon utility, and to fit under 500Kb zip limit I have resized (quarter size) and Jpeged (sorry), appreciate any/all feedback....

[RB]

John I had a little go and this is what I got.

[Itchy]

Hi John,

Unfortunately, I think using jpeg to get the files size down has lost some detail in the compression. Also, the best way to reduce noise is to take lots of subframes. A single three minute shot in this warm weather will be quite noisy, even with the in camera noise reduction on. The signal to noise ratio improves by a factor of the square root of the number of subframes. So it is worth taking the extra frames. Of course being washed out in the LP doesn't help either.

cheers

[Mikezoom]

Love that second shot John, very nice. ;)

Mike.B.

[JohnH]

Stacked in registax, cleaned up in Neat Image and minor cropping to reduce vignetting and levels pushed in PSE, lifted the red a little more than the other channels to compensate for the unmodded 20D and tried not to clip the faint details. Not sure I can do better without a dark sky (no moon). Comments welcome.

[RB]

That looks good John.

[tornado33]

That shot slows a lot of faint detail. Since it was taken with the moon up, then Im sure it will be even better under a dark sky.
Scott

[Itchy]

Hi John

Well Done!! There is a lot more detail in that shot than your original.

I took another look at the histogram. You have certainly avoided the clipping issue this time. In fact your black point may be a little high. I made an adjustment. Which one is better is a matter of taste really.

All you need now is a dark night!!!

Once again, well done!

cheers

[Astroman]

they all look great, but I dont mind the original.