Got a decent polar alignment this morning, and clear skies to boot
Had a go at a few targets, but this is the best of them all, i am over the moon at this shot, it has made my day.
Stacked 6 images in registax and it worked 30 and 60 second exposures, also got a 120 second exposure, but day was breaking so it's a bit washed out, can't see much star trails, so it seems like i was pretty close to the scp now thats a bonus.
I combined both your above images and tweaked a bit....obvioulsy it would be much better with the raw's or less compressed images but I am happy with the result.
Yes Mike this was with the ED80, i have seen what others have done with this scope, but wasn't able to get even close without polar alignment.
I'm wrapped to have been lucky with my polar alignment with this shot, the ground has been marked, and it can only get better.
I do feel a bit guilty having clear skies when Brissie was getting hail,,,,,,,,,,,not
I don't mind at all if people play with my pics, it's good to see just what can be done with an image.
Here is another pic from this morning, could only manage a couple of shots before the clouds rolled in, but i am actually enjoying setting up and getting polar alignment, practice makes perfect.
This is a 90 second exposure, ISO 1600, single image, only slightly adjusted in RawShoterEssentials, converted to jpg, re-sized.
I used Photoshop, But I often reprocess other folks pic's (since I have nothing to shoot with) to get practice.
Mike... Ok, from memory, I adjusted the levels to darken the background,
used curves x2 to bring out the fainter neblousity, I then duplicated the
layer several times then merged them using a combination of "lighten" and
"Lumousity" algorithms, basically to try and further reduce noise artifacts
(which are still present) and still retain the fainter nebulousity and also
to hightlight the fishes mouth. I then applied a selective high pass sharpening
masks to bring out or enhance the knots and filements in the cloud structure.
The final images came out at just under 1mg so it has had a bit of
compression to upload here. However there isn't allot of difference between
the two once a jpeg always a jpeg. All up took about 30 minutes.
Can someone please explain whats wrong with my processing of Trevors Orion....I look at Robs and all I see is a lot of noise...Not knocking Robs processing I am just trying to find out what we are looking for in an image....if I finished with what Rob just done I would have delited it lol.....thats just my interprutation.
I know I darken the back ground too much making the target object stand out more.....which I am trying not to do as much.
I am using this as a learning process...if what I have to achieve is like what Rob has done then thats what I will strive for....but at the moment my inturpritaions of a nice image is way different.
I might just be a noise hater....I suppose I get that from not seeing and noise last time I viewed my targets.
Like I said Rob...not nocking your image...just trying to get more of an understanding of all this astrophotgraphy.
As I mentioned in my discription "noise" is still present, a trade off you make when
trying to rework a precompressed image, hence the statement "once a jpeg always
a jpeg". However I was willing to trade that to bring out the far extremities of the
fainter nebulous areas including the jaw of the fishes mouth (so to speak). On the
other hand your monitor setting maybe totally different to mine, you image to me
look too dark to me where as the noise level in my rework looks exceptable to me.
In the end we're are just presenting two interpretations. To me neither looks
incorrect.
M42 My best yet.
Got a decent polar alignment this morning, and clear skies to boot
, it has made my day.
30 and 60 second exposures, also got a 120 second exposure, but day was breaking so it's a bit washed out, can't see much star trails, so it seems like i was pretty close to the scp now thats a bonus.
