Hello,
Well, I finally dipped my big toe into LRGB imaging – and boy, was the water hot!
I chose M83 as the target for my initiation into the dark art, despite a 19 day Moon (waning gibbous) lurking just over 30 degrees away. Suburban Brisbane, night of 8th/9th April.
Equipment- Vixen ED102mm f9 refractor at prime focus.
- SBIG ST7E ccd camera & CFW-8A colour filter wheel.
- L=20x2 mins, R=10x2 mins, G=10X2 mins, B=10x3 mins, all binned at 1x1.
Processing- Sub-frames of individual LRGB components were Dark Subtracted, Flat Fielded, Aligned and Combined in MIRA AP.
- An attempt to remove the strong light gradients on the LRGB components was made using MIRA AP.
- The 4 Combined LRGB components were then Aligned and Combined in CCDSoft.
- Final Colour Combine in Maxim DL.
- Histogram and Levels tweaked in Corel PhotoPaint 12.
After setting up the gear, cooling the camera, focusing, etc., the image acquisition was the easy part and I even managed to have a snooze beside the ‘scope. Processing and colour combining hurt my head. A DSLR is looking quite attractive right now!
Cheers
Dennis