First time nightscape help

[Icearcher (Chris)]

Hi All

Got some very dark skies on the weekend and grabbed some pics on the bosses 1100D.

Shot at 18mm @ 30sec.

Its a shot of the southern cross with a big swath of the milky way.

Theres a bunch more from that night as well.

Can you knowledgeable lot give me some processing advise?

[raymo]

Nicely done, but the sky should be ablaze with stars at 30 secs, so
I assume that you were using a low ISO setting.
raymo

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

nice start chris

it looks a bit dark / monochrome - as raymo says its is probably the iso (or perhaps f-stop) here is a good guide for night scapes
http://www.mikesalway.com.au/nightsc...phy-101-intro/

i had a quick edit in PS to see what i could do. it can take a tiny bit of stretching in curves and you should boost the saturation to bring some star colour and milky way (and carina neb) out but not much due to - i think - the capture settings.

cheers

russ

[Icearcher (Chris)]

Thanks guys.

Camera was at ISO 1600 and F5.6.

Always hard when your playing with someone elses camera.

Russell, did you have a link or know of a guide to do the stretching and saturation stuff?

I have the RAW files and they seem to show a bit more detail and a lot more red.

Im only just starting to learn how to process so all help is welcome.

Regards
Chris

[blink138 (Pat)]

also chris google the "600" rule for astrophotography, this is by far the handiest tool for you to start with and works a treat
"deep sky stacker" is a free download which enables you to take a handful of widefield shots and stack them together revealing a lot more detail, this is also free!
pat

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

hi chris

this is aimed more for stacked images (as the have better signal to noise ratios). but the idea is the same for stretching. you won't be able to do as many iterations as its a single exposure and not stacked.
http://myastroimages.com/Astro_Imagi...toShop_Curves/

I'd recommend opening up the f stop a bit and/or upping the iso.

cheers