A break in clouds, lagoon and trifid widefield.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Hi,

Had a bit of luck with a break in the clouds, managed 44 minutes of data out of 90 minutes.
I'm reasonably pleased with this image as I'm using a standard 75 to 300 zoom at 170mm.

The image is cropped slightly.

Telescope 8" f/4 astrograph on a HEQ Pro 5 mount, orion mini guider.
Unmodded Canon 1100D , piggy backed 75 to 300 lens at f/5.0
44 minutes ISO 1600
7 dark frames, 7 flat frames and 7 bias.
Stacked in DSS and post process in Phototshop.
Cheers,

Justin.

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

I take my hat off to you Justin, being able to capitalise on a 90 min break in the clouds. It normally takes me at an hour and a half to set up my rig before I'm ready to start capturing. Nice image scale for these objects, showing them in context and quite a bit of detail too.

As an aside, flats and biases are so quick to take that I'd be looking at averaging 20 - 30 rather than 7. It'll give less noise in your masters. Just a thought.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by Rigel003

I take my hat off to you Justin, being able to capitalise on a 90 min break in the clouds. It normally takes me at an hour and a half to set up my rig before I'm ready to start capturing. Nice image scale for these objects, showing them in context and quite a bit of detail too.

As an aside, flats and biases are so quick to take that I'd be looking at averaging 20 - 30 rather than 7. It'll give less noise in your masters. Just a thought.

Thanks Graeme.

Yes I need to build up my dark flat and bias library, I usually run at ISO 800 have more for this. ISO 1600 was a choice to get as much detail as I could before the clouds rolled in again.

Cheers,

Justin.

[Jbunky86 (Jason)]

Nice detail,

Good stuff mate

[Ross G]

Great shot Justin.

Very nice detail and colours.

Ross.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Thanks Jason and Ross.

The thing that annoys me in this image is the very orange stars with halo's. These were like this in the original frames, tried processing it out.

Anyone have any tips on this?

Cheers,

Justin.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Hi,
Did a little more processing on the stars to get rid of the halo's, it sort of worked.

I zoomed in on the image selected colour range in PS clicked on the halo's and desaturated. Then selected stars and desaturated by 30%.

Cheers,

Justin.

[Rex]

Nice job Justin. Wow 44 out of 90, mate that's great going.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Cheers,

Thanks for that Rex.

Justin.