Capturing the Tarantula

[Andy01]

Hi Everyone,

Nice clear night in Melbourne last night - had my first go at capturing the Tarantula Nebula.

Unguided single 30 sec exposure - iso 1000, Nikon D700
There are several more frames to process eventually when I get a stacking program working on the mac.

Interesting object, my kids think it looks kind of spooky!

Thoughts & comments welcome.

Cheers

Andy

[Larryp]

Good detail for 30 sec. exposure,Andy

[scagman]

Hi Andy,

Nice shot. Should come up well when you sort out a stacking program.

Were you using the ED120 for this shot? The reason I ask is you have diffraction spikes, I didn't think they occured on refractors, I thought they were caused by spider vains, etc.

I do like them, them give the stars that twinkle. Just curious.

Cheers.

[ourkind]

Great shot Andy I've been imaging this one too and you've gotten a lot more detail in one image than me in 20! Well done looks great! :thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Hi John, yes I was using the ED120.

The diffraction spikes are added in post production.
I like the look of them as well, I think they give the image a pleasing artistic feel, rather than an absolutely accurate scientific look.

As we're all imaging the same objects, it's nice to have some differences.:)

The action set including diffraction spikes is downloadable - Astronomy tools 1.6
http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/Downloads.html

I've attached a before and after so you can see the original raw file, before I processed it with Photoshop, NIK filters, & The Astronomy tools.

Thanks for the feedback :thumbsup:

Andy