M83 from bortle 6 suburb with FSQ106

[cventer]

Took this as an experiment to see how Galaxy imaging from burbs of inner Melbourne suburb would go.

Taken with:

Scope: FSQ106
Mount: Paramount MX
Camera: Sbig ST-2000XM with Astrodon Gen 1 LRGB filters
Guider: Orion Starshoot
Guidescope: Stellarvue M3 80mm Finder
Image : 12 x 8 min Lum Bin 1 x 1 , 6 RGB x 6 min Bin 2x2

Full Frame here (http://www.dslrfocus.com/gallery/M83.html)

[stevous67]

10min luminance subs at F5 in the city? This is a great image, nice core detail and colour range. Better have a try myself from home!

Thanks for sharing Chris.

Steve

[Mighty_oz]

That's really nice Chris :) Have u tried the FSQ with the extender for F8 ?
what suburb are u at in that there town ?

[cventer]

Thanks Steve.

You got me thinking. I just checked my Lum subs and they were 8 min not 10. Have edited the info. Good pickup.

[cventer]

Thanks.

I'm in Malvern/Glen iris

No have not tried extender. Never realy thought it an option.I have an fs128 that I can use for longer focal length work.

[Rigel003]

Amazing result for a suburban LRGB. Great detail and colour.

[cventer]

Thanks Graeme

The seeing was very good most of the night. My phd graph was almost dead flat while I was getting lum frames.

I have not posted any images for a while as I have been doing a lot of learning re processing side of things. This has had the biggest impact. I tried processing this same image right after I took it weeks ago and the result was underwhelming. So decided it was time to study. I bought Adams blocks entire tutorial series and full end to end image processing videos a month or so back. Decided to get serious and have learned so much from those. Highly recommended.

[multiweb]

:eyepop: This is very nice. Great colors too. Killer seeing and killer processing. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Rigel003]

Was that Powerful Processing in Photoshop? I bought that in January and have worked through most of it. Excellent info, but I find the delivery style can be a little slow.

[gregbradley]

That's a ripper Chris.

Stars though look a tad large. Perhaps a bit of deconvolution on the luminance - 40 iterations positive constraint would tighten them up a tad plus a little bit more colour in them. The galaxy colours look perfect.

Yes Adams tutorials are very good but he is a bit slow to get to the point sometimes. Some of the longer tutorials could be done in half the time. Tony Hallas DVDs are much better in that regard and they cover much the same stuff although Adam covers more overall.

Greg.

[Ross G]

That's a great galaxy photo Chris, especially coming from suburban Melbourne.

Well done.


Ross.

[TrevorW]

Very nice

[cventer]

Yes. I bought that, plus CCD Stack Tutorial. But what broought it all to life was his new end to end series where from RAW data through to CCD Stack into Photoshop, every single step is filmed. Some of them take 2 hours to watch but I picked up on so much. Problem with Powerful Processing in Photoshop is that it gives you all the tools/techniques but no good idea on order/sequence of doing things.

You can find them here: http://skycenter.arizona.edu/store/tutorials
I got them all but suggest best ones are 6914 and SH2-136.

The single biigest tip that has made a lot of difference for me is not to stretch Lum layer too much before adding color as unless its grey it wont get color when blended with Luminance. I was previously stetching my Lum layers to get a final image before adding color and all the stars and bright areas were never getting color as a result. Making sure background count also has a nice pedestal (ie not clipped) before bringing into photshop has also helped a lot.

[cventer]

Thanks Greg,

I did use PC deconvolution. I also tried Max entropy. They did make a small difference, but becuase I am undersampled in data deconvolution realy only impacts larger stars and does strange things to shape of smaller ones. I ended up blending a combination of Max Entropy and Positive contraint deconvolution images in Photoshop. I also tried up sizing the Lum frame x 2 then running deconvoilution. this works well as well but when you then shrink again you get some artifacts from that so just left well enough alone.

I did have much more star color but ended up dialing it back a bit as I felt it distracted from the Galaxy and looked less processed that way.

[cventer]

Thanks Marc.

It took three nights worth of processing before I was happy enough to post. As I learn I may get quicker.

[cventer]

Thanks Trevor



Thanks for looking. Yes I was well pleased with results being from a very non dark sky. It just takes tons of signal I am finding. When my AG-10 at f3.8 arrives I should be able to suck in more signal in a single night for suburban imaging.

[cventer]

Greg

You are 100% right with star color. I had another look and agree I dialed it back way too much. I replaced versions in original post with better star colors. I dont like some of the over saturated star color trend I am seeing some times but this I think still looks natural. Thanks for comments and suggestion. Its a never ending learning journey.

[gregbradley]

You got a nice look there now.

Interesting about the deconvolution. I suppose the sampling does affect deconvolution results a lot. I usually get a gain in my systems with mild deconvolution - 30 iterations positive constraint (max entropy seems to give weird results). Usually it reduces FWHM values by about 1/5th to 1/4. Too much and I get halos and overly sharpened harsh looking stars.

A fine balancing act as always.

Greg.

[cventer]

Just went to astromart and noticed my m83 from this thread is Image of the day. Sweet!

8pm now IOD changed to new one :-(

[Stevec35]

That's really great! Beautiful colour and detail. If you can do that from Melbourne suburbia then maybe I don't have to worry to much about the expansion of Canberra.

Cheers

Steve

[Paul Haese]

Nice and detailed. Given that this is from light polluted suburbs it is outstanding. Great colour.

[cventer]

Thanks Steve

Its surprising what you can image from burbs. Certainly the brighter objects. reflection nebula etc... are not something I would try.

[cventer]

Thanks Paul.

[RobF]

Beautiful image Chris - nice subtle processing and colours, and all the more reason to be smug collecting it from the backyear.

Top effort.