Centre of the Milkyway

iceman (Mike) · #1 15-10-2007, 02:23 PM

Hi all

Went to the local dark sky site on Saturday night (not really that dark but darker than home). I spent considerable time drift aligning (a first for me!) with the intention of a night of imaging! Unfortunately my batteries ran out by 11pm and I didn't get to do any ED80 stuff

I started with some widefields (350D + 17-70mm lens) of the milkyway, before it got too low. I wanted to do more but it was getting too low so I only took 6 subs.

Canon 350D + 17-70mm Sigma lens @ 53mm, f/5.6, ISO800.
6x 300s lights, unguided. 5x 300s darks.
Aligned and Stacked in DSS.
Saturation, Curves and Levels in Photoshop.

I'm pretty happy with it, always feel it could be better though. That'll be the last milkyway for me this year, it's just too low now by the time it gets dark enough. Can't wait for it to rise next year!

Ric · #2 15-10-2007, 02:33 PM

A great widefield Mike, the Lagoon and the Trifid nebula's look very nice just hanging there amidst the star fields.

A fine image

h0ughy (David) · #3 15-10-2007, 02:35 PM

nasty nasty nasty green amp glow ruining a wonderful shot. Did you take dark frames and subtract them that should go?

ok on reading you did - then it must be the way you processed it

iceman (Mike) · #4 15-10-2007, 02:37 PM

I took 5x 5min darks as well and they (should've been) subtracted using DSS.

h0ughy (David) · #5 15-10-2007, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iceman

I took 5x 5min darks as well and they (should've been) subtracted using DSS.

can I have a play with the data set - can you upload to ftp ?

EzyStyles (Eric) · #6 15-10-2007, 03:25 PM

beautiful shot mike esp at F5.6 . thats heaps of details.

iceman (Mike) · #7 15-10-2007, 03:53 PM

Sure Dave, i'll zip it up and upload it tomorrow.

sheeny (Al) · #8 15-10-2007, 04:37 PM

Very nice Mike!

I saved a copy and had a look in PS to have a look at the histogram. It looks to me like it could benefit from a bit of an increase in contrast. I had a fiddle with curves and both "increase contrast" and "strong contrast" curve presets in CS3 look better to me on my monitor. Without that, it looks like a white mist/film in front of the image on my monitor.

What curves processing did you do?

Al.

iceman (Mike) · #9 15-10-2007, 05:26 PM

Thanks Al, that happened last time with my milkyway image because I processed it on the laptop, and once I got it on the proper LCD I did exactly what you suggest.

Again this was processed on my laptop - when I'm back in the office tomorrow I may well reprocess it

Phil · #10 15-10-2007, 05:53 PM

Wow very nice well done.
Phil

Orion · #11 15-10-2007, 06:04 PM

It's a beautiful shot Mike.
It amazes me the amount of stars you can see with Milky Way pics.

Rodstar (Rod) · #12 15-10-2007, 06:49 PM

Great image Mike. I love it how M8 and M20 stand out so clearly.