Finally got rid of Melbourne's pesky clouds on Saturday night so had a go with the RC8 again This is more of a rough-n-dirty attempt as I was testing out a few things so not the best of images Images are the Stacked Ha, Stacked OIII, Rough edit and Final version.
Mount: NEQ6
Imaging Train: GSO CF RC8 - CCDT67 Reducer - OAG - FW - QHY9M
Guiding: Lodestar used with a TSOAG9, 2sec guiding
Ha - 300sec * 8 Subs
OIII - 300sec * 6 Subs
Image processing: Captured in Maxim 5, Stacked in DSS, Edited in Photoshop CS6
R:G:B -> Ha : (Ha+OIII Average) : OIII
I have no darks and 300sec (5min) is nowhere long enough to get the finer details so is a little noisy. I also believe I have lost some dynamic range because of how aggressively I stretched it. Plus my focus seems a bit off, which is frustrating because it looks great with the Bahtinov mask and then is always slight fuzzy! Anyways any feedback would be great
Hi Rex,
Thank you I would have loved to do deeper subs and know how to use astro-processing software but for now I'm all old school on photoshop hehe. I hope the weather picks up for you, you had some great images with your 8".
Thanks Col,
I never realised there was this much Ha floating around in that area. I heavily biased the colour to the Red & Blue as I prefer the look of that palette (For when I have no SII).
Ah damn this is proving to be a PITA. I copied the public URL as it said to do so (the link icon) and I have mixed success. I'll see if I can work something out
I had a play with the jpg's you'd attached to this thread so this is very rough stretch in startools, but shows there's a lot of data in there and details that can be brought out. core is blown out as this is from the stretched image.
The linear fits will be needed to avoid blowing out the core as that is quite a bright area.
some HDR should yield good results as well.
very nice though for just 35 mins.
Cheers
Alistair
Last edited by alistairsam; 22-11-2013 at 11:42 AM.
Thank you and that's very nice, lots more detail. The ones that I uploaded were stacked but unedited; they were stretched harder like yours and then combined to give the RGB image. I'd like to see what RGB version you could come up with using startools or PI! Once I get the fits uploaded properly of course
Your focus looks spot on to me. Remember, the images are considerably magnified when you look at them on your screen. I have my screen set
to 125%, and the images look pretty good, but when I lower the mag to
100% or 75 or 50, they get better and better; up to 75 they are pin sharp,
great job.
raymo
Thanks Raymo,
That is a good point! I feel alot better now I suppose I'm looking for tack sharp focus even at 100% but that will take some time - I have still have a little curvature (mis-collimation) and it was windy so it bounced a little.
Wow! That's very impressive guys, had no idea there was that much data. Guess using PS is a bit like being a caveman hey Definitely could do with some noise reduction, so I've updated the links again and are now dark-subtracted with 10 frames. Just used the standard median stacking method.
I would like to see if either of you could make a composite RGB like how I did, and see how out results differ! I might have a shot with star tools, though it's a little bit of a learning curve using a new image software
This is more of a rough-n-dirty attempt as I was testing out a few things so not the best of images 
Images are the Stacked Ha, Stacked OIII, Rough edit and Final version.
I suppose I'm looking for tack sharp focus even at 100% but that will take some time - I have still have a little curvature (mis-collimation) and it was windy so it bounced a little.
