Ic 4628 10hrs 45min

[jjjnettie]

I'm up to 7hrs of data on this target so far. :D
I'd been capturing the 5 minute subs at ISO 400 , building up a smooth, low noise background. Last night I upped it to ISO 800. The colour has popped out now. Tonight will see the exposure time pass the 10hr mark. So excited to see how well it will look then.
ED80
Modded 20D
Heq5Pro mount
Home made finder guider using qhy5
Guided PHD
Stacked DSS and processing in CS3.

And this is the final image. 10 hrs and 45 min exposure time. I'll not be adding any more data to the image at this stage. I'm bored with it. :P
The stars are starting to blow out way too much.
I'll spend some time working on repros now.

[Mighty_oz]

Wow way to go JJJ :) 7hrs ! marathon effort, looks good, nice colours, maybe a bit soft ? Hard to see at that level. Anyways i'd be happy with that effort.
How many hrs u going to try to do ?

Marcus.

[strongmanmike]

Ah fluffy fairy floss...frawn flavoured, nice and subtle :)

10hrs huh? moving into the BIG exposure league :thumbsup:

Mike

[multiweb]

It's looking great. And with a DSLR. Terrific work. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

That's awesome. A 10 hour DSLR image - yahoo!

Greg.

[stardust steve]

mmmm prawns. looks great. That triangle of stars almost looks like the Jewel Box open cluster
mmmm clusters:)

[Stevec35]

That's a great IC4628.

Cheers

Steve

[jjjnettie]

Thanks for looking guys.
Processing consisted of a couple of interations of curves, colour balancing and adjusting the contrast a bit.
It's sweet not to have to apply noise reduction. :D I didn't sharpen at all either. Which may account for the softness maybe??
I'll go through the subs and see if there are any that aren't up to scratch and remove them from the mix.

[Forgey]

Lovely image jjj.

[rcheshire]

Looks good and a clever approach to acquisition:question: got me thinking.

[h0ughy]

very nice work JJJ. more time should be grand

[jjjnettie]

:) I might shoot some at iso1600 later and see how well they fit into the mix. The temperature is going to be close to freezing tonight so I won't have to worry too much about thermal noise.
Its just gone 9pm and its down to 6C already. brrrr
LOL I should dust off the 550d and have it riding piggy back and catch some wide fields too.

[marco]

Very beautiful JJJ, another excellent shot here :) I like the very natural look in particular, color balance is spot on!

Clear skies
Marco

[Martin Pugh]

Kudos JJ for your perseverance.

and a fine image to boot.

cheers
Martin

[Paul Haese]

buttery background JJJ. I would prefer more saturation but a very nice image all the same.

[jjjnettie]

Thanks, the feedback means a lot.
I know what you mean about the colour Paul. I'll give it a repro further down the track. I'm all Prawned out atm.

[DJT]

Hi JJJ

Well done on the 10 hours. Its a great image.


Did you take seperate darks as well or use in camera noise reduction, or did you rely on the low ISO and post processing noise reduction plug ins?

Would be interested as I am playing with 20 minute exposures with ICNR at ISO400 so keen to hear what approach you took for "darks".

[Lester]

Very nice image JJ. Will give this area a go tonight for the first time.

[jjjnettie]

David, I have a darks library that I can use.
I make a new library at the start of each season. They are taken at different times of the night so as to capture the different noise apparent at different temperatures. At the end of most nights, I'll leave the camera to do it's thing, taking darks.
I have a folder for each camera, 550d and 20d, and the sub folders hold each particular collection. eg
5 minute iso 400
3 minute iso 800
And in each sub folder there is a master dark. Which gets renewed every time I add more darks into the mix.

I take new flats at the end of nearly every imaging session.

Others may do things differently. But it works for me.

[swannies1983]

Wow and I thought my 6hrs on the Horse Head using my unmodded 400d was an achievement. Top job :thumbsup:

[DJT]

Thanks for that. Still not sure if I am a dslr owner or a wannabee ccd owner with a dslr. Its all horses for courses of course but I have seem some great dslr shots, yours included.

Thanks for sharing

[blink138]

heh nettie when you say keep a library, how many dark exposures would you keep?
can you then administer them to any of your nights work?
pat

[jjjnettie]

At the moment, in the 550d 5 min ISO400 folder , there are 83 darks.
So long as we don't get an extra warm night, I can use them until the end of Winter. They were taken when the temperature was below 10C.
I could get fussy , as I did last winter, and organise them further into smaller increments of temperature range. But I'm not going to bother this year.
As mentioned before, I'll keep adding to the library from time to time.