First light on new gear M8 and M20

[Grimmeister (Anthony)]

Hi All,

As some know already I have just received my new equipment on Friday and have had a play around in the lounge room with settings etc and all was working properly so I thought I would give it a crack out the front yard.

The new kit I received was:
EQ6 Pro
WO Megrez 90 (with FF v4)
WO Zenithstar 70 (and Orion Starshoot Autoguider)
Lappy to do the leg work
Canon EOS 600D unmodded

My first target was M8 and M20 as I have always loved viewing them through my telescope under a dark sky, so now I have my astrophotography set up really wanted to see it with some colour

I live 10 Kms from Brisbane CBD so light polution is terrible (can only make out major stars like southern cross (on the google maps light polutiuon overlay we are well inside the red area e.g. might as well be day time).

Anyway After adjusting the Contrast and brightness to take out the background light I was really pleased with the image I had, stars are round, image is in focus and even started to get some colours in the gas clouds so was well impressed.

Despite being a support engineer for 10 years and being proficient in most things computers, I am not any good at all with imaging software and the adjustments you can make so would really appreciate some feedback on what could be done to enhance this further.

I have attached original image and post contrast/brightness adjusted image to show the light polution we have here.

Image was ISO 400 for 3 minutes on the Megrez 90 with FF attached.

Oh and P.S. Cant wait for dark night at Somerset dam this month with the BAS club, will retry this under dark skys and see how much better I can get it.

Cheers

Anthony

[Saturn%5 (Graeme)]

Hi Anthony.
That is a good first effort from you, and i can understand what you saying about the lp, I moved from Laidley to Launceston 12 months ago and i miss walking out my backdoor and seeing the lmc & smc up in the sky but that will change soon keep up the good work.

Cheers

Graeme

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

quick squeeze

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

are you South of Bris or North?

[scagman (John)]

Thats a good shot Anthony. Total noob myself with no experiance except what I have read on this forum.
When I looked at your shot and how much you cleaned it up, I thought if you had more subs it would probable bring out more detail etc. Then Jennifer takes your uploaded image and gives it "A quick squeeze", and "WOW".

I'm a bit like you Anthony when It comes to computers and image processing so I cant give you and advice or feedback, except to say that your well on your way to taking some nice shots. Hopefully when if/when my mount arrives I'll be able to get shots like this for my first shots.

It always amazes me what people in the know can do with a little bit of data.

Jennifer, Is squeezing differant to streching?

[adman (Adam)]

Nice going Anthony!

if that image was taken in the last few days, a lot of that fog on the raw image will be from the moon. If you wait till the moon is gone you will be able to do 3 minute subs that look way better than that. Just got to take lots of them and start stacking!

This image was taken from Ashgrove with targets nearing zenith but still pointing slightly east towards the city lights. It was 14 subs of 300 seconds each at 800 iso.

You've got nice round stars which is more than half the battle!

Adam

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

Squeezing is my way of stretching - same thing but I do it backwards coz I'm left handed.
The image can be manipulated thus:
I did this in PS but it can be done similarly in GIMP (free)
Levels - clip black so histogram is over to the left with small gap between the light graph and the edge.Move the central arrow left until the image starts to blotch and then back off a bit.
Go to curves pull middle of graph line towards left top corner until image has more light, divide line - 1/4 of way up drag line down to clip black again - pull 1/4 from top to form S - to bring out a little more light.
If it has a particular colour, pull one of the colours on the curve to improve colour correction.

That's all I did - total about 30 seconds - do it a few times and you can really make it 'pop' - without ever doing anything else.

[Grimmeister (Anthony)]

Hi All,

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone and fo rthe tips, I completely forgot about the moon as it was behind me when shooting the image last night, so focused oin technique didn't notice the obvious .

I really must learn more about post image manipulation as I can see a massive difference from Jenchris and have taken notes on the process used (sqeezing, streching, popping, sounds more like aerobics than image manipulation LOL)

I live on the north side of Brissy (not far from Ashgrove Adman, nice shot by the way) so will definitly be trying this again when there is no moon about (and maybe that street light across the road might suffer an ill fate )

I can see now it is not nessesarily the the visibility quality at the time (though good dark skys definitly help) but the amount of data you can get into the shot (e.g. more subs stacked) that can be touched up later with a little know how.

One thing is for sure I am pumped about the whole experience and cannot wait till the end of the month for the dark night with the club

Cheers

Anthony

[cybereye (Mario)]

Hi Anthony,

A good image and I feel for your LP problem. I'm 12kms from Brisbane - to the south - and have overcome my light-pollution problems with a Baader UHC-S filter that I bought from Peter Tan in Hong Kong. Other than that you need lots and lots of data to stack. The more you can capture and stack the better the resultant image will be. It's all about beating the noise!!

I've added a link of my latest image that will show you what's possible from a position close to Brisbane's CBD... keep up the good work!

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=80108

Cheers,
Mario