M104: Sombrero Galaxy

OzRob (Rob) · #1 14-03-2011, 03:24 AM

I had given this target the flick eariler as I thought it would be too small in my setup. Mill posted his great photo of it and I decided to give it a try.

I am not overly happy with the star colours and they appear a bit 'furry'. I am not sure what happened there. Any tips are welcome.

The image was taken in the north of Thailand on the 5th and 6th of this month. There is 100 minutes of lum in 10 minute subs and 30 minutes in each of RGB in 5 minute subs binned at 2x2 with the gear in my signature. There is also a full res crop of the galaxy.

Screwdriverone (Chris) · #2 14-03-2011, 09:10 AM

Hi Rob,

Love the widefield, makes M104 seem to "settle" into it's surroundings.

Seems slightly green to me? Notice the stars in the bottom right hand corner.

Other than that....pretty special shot.

Nice work,

Cheers

Chris

desler · #3 14-03-2011, 09:40 AM

Appears just a tad blotchy in the backgroud. Although you've done really well with the data, looks fantastic!

Darren

CoolhandJo (Paul) · #4 14-03-2011, 09:45 AM

Nonetheless the detail in the galaxy is great!

Lester · #5 14-03-2011, 10:15 AM

Nice image Rob, perhaps the colour could be tweeked a tad. Thanks for the view.

guyroch · #6 14-03-2011, 10:30 AM

This is actually very, very good. The crop is holding up pretty good as well... and this is hard on such a small and bright target.

Well done!

Guylain

marc4darkskies (Marcus) · #7 14-03-2011, 10:33 AM

That's a nice shot Rob!

Too much green overall though, that's your main problem. Play with the colour balance a bit (use a curves or colour balance tool) or adjust the white balance. I'm guessing you may need to add a bit of blue or cyan too.

Cheers, Marcus

mill (Martin) · #8 14-03-2011, 11:07 AM

Very nicely done

I have just done a quick repro if you don't mind.
First i did an auto tone, then levels, then made the stars a bit more colourful.
A bit of sharpening of the dust belt and then a bit of curves to tone the glow a bit down.
Beeing such a small file and jpeg it is a bit hard to get much out of it.

OzRob (Rob) · #9 14-03-2011, 02:57 PM

Thanks everyone for your comments.

I think Mill's repro highlights where the apparent green cast is coming from. You can see that the stars have a green halo. The backround is balanced. If I try to adjust the colour balance it is reflected in the background and it starts to look completely off. I am guessing that the focus slipped a bit between the red and green frames before I refocussed prior to the blue frames.

The blotchy backgroud was a lot worse than what it is. The noise came from the blue frames. I got rid of most of it but there is a balance between blotchy and looking too smooth.