I have been spending quite a bit of time lately learning different ways of processing images with GIMP, it really pays to keep the original data and try to reprocess in different ways, I highly recomend doing this for other beginners at astrophotography.
This image was taken in alt/az mode with no guiding so there are still some blobby stars from field rotation and tracking errors. I still need to work on smoothing out some gradients and halos around some of the stars, the image looks to have a different colour tone on each of the 3 computers at home, so I hope the tone of these are ok.
I still have a lot to learn so here are some of my latest attempts at reprocessing Centaurus A.
Image 1= Centaurus A 3rd attempt at processing
Image 2= Centaurus A 2nd attempt at processing
Image 3= Centaurus A 1st attempt at processing
Image 4= Centaurus A central crop of dust lane
Image 5= Centaurus A crop of dust lane in grey scale
144 x 25sec subs at iso 1600, darks and bias added
12" LX200 (alt/az setup with no guiding)
Sony Nex-3 DSLR Camera
Stacked in DSS
Processed & Processed & Processed & Processed & Processed & Processed in GIMP !!!!!!!
Re keeping of original data, too damn right !! I have started taking a copy of the data I want to work on rather than playing with the originals. Once I've gotten the result I want it's easy enough to delete the copied source.
This started because I've gotten other or better software and skills since I started so I have gone back to several folders and reprocessed them with much improved results.
I also archive off to a couple of 160gig HDs so even after a crash it's safe.
And nice pix btw, interesting how you can manipulate the colour so much.
