500 Quick Swans

wayne anderson (Wayne) · #1 08-07-2013, 05:20 PM

Pushing the alt/az No guiding imaging to the extreme this is the Swan Nebula.

Swan Nebula M17 (Omega Nebula)

500 x 25sec subs at iso 1600
12" Meade LX200 (alt/az setup with No guiding)
Sony Nex-3 DSLR Camera
Stacked in DSS
Processed in GIMP

Link to higher res image
http://www.astrobin.com/47433/

Larryp (Laurie) · #2 08-07-2013, 05:22 PM

Good one, Wayne!

pluto (Hugh) · #3 08-07-2013, 05:36 PM

Nice image, well done

Lee · #4 09-07-2013, 06:25 PM

Great job - It would be interesting to see the difference between 500 subs and 100 subs?

Howard (Howard) · #5 09-07-2013, 06:47 PM

Beautiful job. I notice ISO1600 ... have you tried before at different ISO's by any chance?

rcheshire (Rowland) · #6 10-07-2013, 09:38 AM

Nice one Wayne. You are teaching us with each submission. 500 frames!

EDIT: Wayne. I had a play with your image in StarTools. Just a little detail enhancement and colour manipulation. It's a beauty. It is very good data and there is a load of detail and contrast in there. Very well done.

wayne anderson (Wayne) · #7 15-07-2013, 10:35 AM

Thanks Laurie and Hugh

Thanks Lee, I have found that with 100 subs there is less detail more noise and the stars are a little more blobby, the optimum for my alt/az No guiding setup seems to be between 400 and 500 subs.

Thanks Howard, I have found iso1600 to work the best for me, iso3200 and above is far too noisy, iso800 and below has less noise but needs much longer subs and in alt/az No guiding setup this records field rotation and tracking errors in the data and gives very large blobby stars in the final stacked image.

Thanks Rowland, I just downloaded the trial version of startools to play with it looks promising.

rcheshire (Rowland) · #8 16-07-2013, 10:12 AM

I think you will enjoy the results, particularly once you have mastered masks. Masking is the key. I also like the fact that Ivo has designed StarTools not to clip your data.

I use 5 basic modules - Develop, Wipe, HDR/Reveal (the default can be a bit too strong on some images) Life/isolate (with an inverted star mask) Colour (various masks to exclude colours and accentuate others. The default full mask works well) and finish up withTracking/Noise reduction.

Cap green is usually required as well.