[AstroViking (Steve)]

Hello all,

I took advantage of the clear skies on Tuesday to get the 'scope out and try my hand at capturing Eta Carinae, Omega Centauri and IC2602 (aka The Southern Pleiades).

I would have been out longer and tried for other targets but I had to work the next day.

I'm trying Siril for the initial stacking and processing before passing the images across to Affinity Photo as a 32-bit TIFF. Siril has a reasonably hefty learning curve when it comes to the various transformations, but I seem to have muddled my way through...

I'm still not totally happy with how the background stars are too prominent for my liking, but I have a feeling I can get around that by some judicious masking and darkening within Affinity.

Any advice or pointers gratefully received!

Cheers,
V

Gear:
Sky Watcher EvoStar 72ED + 0.85 reducer
Nikon D7100
Star Adventurer 2i tracker

All subs were 15 seconds, ISO 1000.
Omega Centauri - 250 subs
IC2602 - 200 subs
Eta Carinae - 200
Darks - 50
Bias / Flats - none