reprocessed Eta newbie doo!

[graham.hobart]

Hello all, after getting my light box from Pete I have re-processed for the first time using darks/flats and dark flats. Just a bit of fun for a newbie on cloudy days.
As before stacked in DSS and processed in StarTools. No photoshop as too expensive!!.
The only way to learn is to try your hand and also gouge out info from the more learned IIS folk. I saturated the colours to make it more festive so not exactly Hubble palette!
Enjoy..
Graz.:-)

[Poita]

Which camera and scope were you using? It certainly is a christmassy palette! I am still stunned that these images are available with of the shelf gear these days, I'll leave it to more knowlegable members to critique, they look great to me.

[graham.hobart]

Hi! Poita, these were taken with an unmodified Canon 450D DSLR acquired second hand from these pages, plus a CLS CCD filter on a Meade 80mm refractor. It's a 10MP chip and I think I am getting more now using a straight from camera to scope 2" adaptor rather than the camera to 1.25" inch adaptor I was using before.
Thanks for comments:D
Graham.

[irwjager]

Christmas came early! :P

Nice going Graham. Great tracking, nice & sharp. Lots of detail visible.

Matter of taste, but maybe ease off a little on the Optimize module - I can see 'Tame' has been given (too much?) free reign to enhance detail and optimise dynamic range. It's given Eta a slight 'gappy' appearance at places, though, I have to say, those 'gaps' are actually real darker detail (not artifacts), so it's all subjective. :)

Here's how you can 'tame' Optimize/Tame a little. Just Optimize as normal, then, when you're done, launch the Layer module. Click Undo->Fg and just blend between the Optimized image and the non-Optimized image.

Edit: Added a more boring repro...

Cheers,

[midnight]

Nice and sharp Graham!

I have to agree with Ivo's comments as the image to me is a little too sharp but certainly your base data looks very good as shown by the nice tight stars. Keep up the good work.

Darrin...

[graham.hobart]

Thanks for advice guys, always welcome. May be doing more reprocessing this weekend as the weather is clouds and rain again. I did notice the sharpness of the image and getting to know now that 'less is more'!
Cheers:D
Graz

[ZeroID]

:xmas: Very festive indeed. Looks like we have a new palette to supplement Hubble, .... 'Xmas'.

Notwithstanding the colours, a good pic.
And I like it anyway .:D

[jenchris]

450D is 12.2mpx I think