[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

Mike(s), Ross, Marc, Andy,

Thanks everyone for your responses. They have certainly captured the essence of my thoughts and challenges throughout this exercise. I have been keen to capture a solid image of Barnard's Loop for some time and was never happy with the results achieved with my DSLR. It is certainly apparent (whether I realised it or not previously) that I was looking for the 'punchy' effect and it is clear from the responses that I have achieved this. Sacrificing contrast in lieu of detail was something I pondered in the processing as I vacillated between fainter detail vs. emphasising the loop and how to manage this. Marc's question on noise reduction has made me think about ways that I may approach this differently or at different stages in the processing which will assist in retaining faint detail.

I will redo this area next summer I am thinking as I have learnt from this exercise. One thing will be to capture the Ha data at 1x1 and to capture additional 60 second subs to assist with dynamic range in the saturated regions. All in all I think that Mike (Placidus) has summarised it well by describing this as a technical adventure. That it was and a most entertaining one as well. In the mean time I must move on to other projects like getting my GSO RC10 up and running.

So many projects and so little time ....

Clear skies.