Hi all,
I've been joying doing some good old deep sky imaging again having moved my telescope from my backyard observatory to my dark sky remote observatory. First target was NGC 1097. I've got a tone of data on it but am not really happy with the end result. Gut feel, I think the problem comes down to my soft LX200 optics. But am interested in the experts opinions here.
I have LRGB data including significant time in the RGB channel (as much in Blue as in Luminance actually!) but to be honest the RGB results look absolutely crap. The Luminance looks good. The individual RGB channels look OK to me, but the combination is absolutely awful. My usual problem of the galaxy lacking colour definition and stars bloated with colour fringing on different sides. So, this is the Luminance.
There's some good detail in the luminance channel but I'm also a bit disappointed by the lack of smooth gradient in the fainter periphery. Posterized almost. All 32 bit processing and haven't managed to attribute this to my image processing. So, perhaps just need 600s instead of 300s exposures to get more data in those softer gradients. Also wondering if I should throw away the 180s exposures and just stack the 300s exposures, perhaps the 180s are bringing down the average in these areas.
https://www.astrobin.com/cfhxrv/B/
Roger.