[Jeffkop (Jeff)]

Hi all

Yep, was out again last night until 2.00 ish. Decided to experiment with exposure times on clusters and nebula's. Its pretty hard to get it right isnt it.

I tried not to over expose the cluster. Every time I have tried to image one of these its turned out like a cool mint thats been smashed with a hammer. So I took a series of different exposures. Its really hard to tell exactly what youve got when you take them and you dont want to waste time playing with them right then, there are other things to image.
So this is a 3 minute one L3 RGB3 and I still have a scrambled core. The other shorter exposures didnt really cut it, and even they had scrambled cores.
So this one worked sort of, shame about the bloated star in the corner of the shot and the noise , but I fear I just dont have enough signal in the exposure and to see any of it reasonably means I have to adjust the levels and then comes the noise and the bloat of the star. So perhaps another series of shots the same exposure length stacked will do the trick?

The nebula, I have tried not to clip the black as has been mentioned in past pictures. This one suffers from a lack of detail and so a longer exposure is necessary, but there are some bright stars in there and I think longer may bloat them. This one is L20 RGB15. Would you suggest the same again and then combine the images?


Thanks for your help

Jeff