My first guided shot! M42

[damo_Melbourne (Damian)]

Firstly a big thankyou to everyone here that has helped me get this far. Im thrilled.
Particularly Allan, Marc (multiweb), Brendan, Peter (Exfso) Daniel and Jeff who have helped me with my alignment and vignetting issues of late

Attached is my first attempt with 5 min subs

I used one of Peters Light boxes (20 frames at 250th second).

It was the windiest night, and I thought Id have no hope of catching anything. A gust actually blew over the lid on my laptop! The little heq5pro and ed80 are as solid as a rock I think!

The only things I have done here are curves and levels and bit of sharpening and placed the 1 min stacked shot in a layer with a layer mask for the core. Are there any instructions of how to blend multiple exposures? Its cropped but the far right is the edge of the frame.

How do the stars look? It’s the best result tracking wise I have had todate.

I have a stack of 10 x 30sec also which I haven’t added yet – not sure how.

Details
ED80
450D unmod
Heq5pro
Phd, Qhy5 and St80
WO flattner II
6/2/2010
Anglesea Victoria

10 x 5 min (6 darks)
10 x 1 min (10 darks)
60 mins

10x 30 sec (not added at this stage)
20 flats why 20? I don’t know but it seemed like a good number! J How many should I take? Ive heard that “more is better”
I have tried faster speeds but this seemed to work best at 1/250

Criticisms and suggestions welcomed.

Thanks for looking and any advice
cheers
Damian

[Jeffkop (Jeff)]

WAY WAY WAY better than my first guided shot of M42 Damian. I think your on the right road there ... its hard to tell you much about the pic as when I zoom in the JPG artifacts swamp it ... but it looks focused well and guided well to me ... trapezium is blown out ... thats standard though.

Will definitely prosper from more data I think ... keep at it

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Damian,

That is a great first effort, I am very impressed.

Frank

[suma126 (Shane)]

IT LOOKS NICE AND SHARP. I'M STILL MANUALLY GUIDING JUST CANT GET AUTO GUIDING TO WORK FOR ME .

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Aweomely good for a first attempt! Won't offer any suggestions/criticisms as I don't know enough! But looks impressive to me.
The only thing I could say is the sky perhaps needs to be"darker", any of the experts able to give Damo tips on this?

[Hagar (Doug)]

What a corker of a first image with active guiding. You should really be proud of this image. Stars are good shape and size, the image is,if anything a little over sharp but that is very minor. Focus looks to be spot on.

I would suggest that when preparing an image for the forum you re-size it down a bit first then do your compression to come in at 200KB. It helps reduce or eliminate the JPG artifacts.

Really well done Damien.
Looking forward to seeing some more.

[damo_Melbourne (Damian)]

thanks for all the comments guys... yes really happy as I have had so many attempts and good to finally get one I can post. I have done a few 1 mins stacked pics before but nothing like this in terms of duration.

Thanks Doug will back off the sharpness a bit... also the tip on resizing first!

I will do some digging around here for some info on blending images of diff exposures

cheers
Damian

[desler]

Hi Damien, yes I have to agree with everyone else, It seems to have all come together, now just more dark skies and and the data capture bug begins.


Darren

[lacad01 (Adam)]

Damien, that's great well done

[multiweb (Marc)]

Superb! You're on your way now.

[Exfso (Peter)]

Good start Damian, re the flats, I usually take a couple more than the lights I have taken. Others may differ on this one though. As Doug says, reduce the image size to about 800x600 and then compress it. The image size depends on the data, as you are limited in size for what can be posted here. Failing that, get a free account on photobucket and place your images there. You can put a URL here to point to them.