First Light - Lagoon Neb 07/09/08

[leinad (Dan)]

First attempt in deep sky astrophotography with the baader modded 350D and Saxon ED80 on the lagoon neb; nice big easy target, slightly light polluted.
30sec ISO800. Only processed slightly in PS to remove red tone and meet image size req.
Still yet to work out dark frame subtraction and other gizmo's.
happy with first attempt, but know it could be a lot better.


EDIT: Latest processing further below.

[Alchemy (Clive)]

i take it these are all different processing of the same frame

youre on the right track there more frames and of course the calibration frames , will allow you to push the image to bring out more detail.

[leon]

As mentioned definitley on the right track, maybe try and get the object more centered and lengthen those subs, nice effort however, well done, especially for a first attempt.

Leon

[mill (Martin)]

Just did a very quick levels and curves in CS2.
Hope you dont mind.
Plenty of detail in the pic, you just need more and longer exposures.
See pic below.

[leinad (Dan)]

Dont mind at all. I didnt Level too much as it made the image background much too noisy to my liking.

I have ten shots of the same exposure length(30sec) , just need to work out how to stack and align, plus include dark frames.

For some reason I cant get MaxDLSR to work; keeps spitting an error at me every time I try to make an exposure.

[mill (Martin)]

Just use Deepskystacker for stacking.
It does the lights and darks and more.
http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

[leinad (Dan)]

Originally Posted by mill

Just use Deepskystacker for stacking.
It does the lights and darks and more.
http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

Downloading now thanks.

[leinad (Dan)]

Had a go at Deepskystacker.

First image is non-PP, 8x15sec ISO800, 4darks.
Second slightly processed of above in DeepSkyStacker and Level/Curve adjusted in PS.
Third, more blur

[mill (Martin)]

Go easy on the levels.
You clipped the red and green channel.

[leinad (Dan)]

Originally Posted by mill

Go easy on the levels.
You clipped the red and green channel.

Tried not to clip too much. Please feel free to process first pic.

[Matty P (Matt)]

A great start Leinad, you are definitely on your way now.

The next step is longer subs and calibration frames.

Very well done

[mill (Martin)]

Here we go.
Very hard to process a jpg image
Levels, curves, gausian blur, noise reduction, and some more curves red, green and blue seperately..

[leinad (Dan)]

Originally Posted by mill

Here we go.
Very hard to process a jpg image
Levels, curves, gausian blur, noise reduction, and some more curves red, green and blue seperately..

Whooarr! Wow thanks! Didnt think I get get all that detail out!
Have to have a more thorough read through my books.
Im pretty sure the images were captured in RAW, but exporting to camera downloaded in JPG.

[winensky]

Great to see you developing the processing side. A Good sharp image so the set up looks good. Go get more data!

[leinad (Dan)]

Thanks for comments, silly me had the camera in JPG mode not RAW.

Been busy reading through the astro processing books in preparation for more data.

Hopefully next attempt will be PHD guided, so longer exposures may be on the cards. Previous captures were only 15 secs, to 30secs max. due to drifting.
Polar alignment wasnt exact, which is still something I'm yet to practice more and master.

[AlexN]

Polar alignment is still something that eludes me also... Im limited to about 3min subs shooting at 300mm focal lenght, or maybe 1min @ 1200mm.

I hope you have more luck with PHD than I have... 3 attempts, failed every time.