M65-66, NGC 3628 Leo trio.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Hi,

Two years since I've imaged the trio.

Really need to beef up my focuser to reduce flexure with the extra weight of the cooler box. I spent some time trying to clean up the stars.

some nice colour coming through, a few more hours and I should get the faint outer loop on M 66.

8” F/4 astrograph , baader type coma corrector, HEQ Pro 5 mount, orion mini guider.
Camera.
Unmodded Cannon 1100D. Cooler box.

16 x 8 minute subs ISO 400 . Darks, Flats and bias frames applied. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker .Processed in Photoshop 7 .
Cheers,

Justin.

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

Very nice, Justin. Good detail in all the spirals. Background maybe a little dark and devoid of stars. Makes the galaxies look lonely within the field. Is that deep red dot under the brightest star an actual star or an artifact?

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Nice work, Justin

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by Rigel003

Very nice, Justin. Good detail in all the spirals. Background maybe a little dark and devoid of stars. Makes the galaxies look lonely within the field. Is that deep red dot under the brightest star an actual star or an artifact?

Thanks Graeme!

Yep a little dark, just hiding a less than perfect background.
The number of stars is right. Not sure about the deep red dot, seems to be a star in the unprocessed image.

Originally Posted by Larryp

Nice work, Justin

Thanks Laurie!

Cheers,

Justin.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Nice detail there Justin. It's been about 25 years since I shot these lol.

How do you get the star colours so vivid?

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Nice detail there Justin. It's been about 25 years since I shot these lol.

How do you get the star colours so vivid?

Thanks Kevin!

I usually saturate the stars three times in PS. First an overall image saturation to about 25%. Then I select stars using the magic wand and expand 3 to 7 pixels and saturate again to as much as 50%. I also use the noise filter, gausian blur and unsharp mask to try and clean the stars up.
Finally and again with the whole image I may increase saturation of particular star colour by 10%.
I don't work with raw, always convert to tiff, I have more success this way.

Cheers,

Justin.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Sounds complicated, but I do like the effect.

[batema (Mark)]

Very nice. Love the colours.

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice work, Justin! Just looks slightly black clipped as previously commented.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by batema

Very nice. Love the colours.

Thanks Mark!

Originally Posted by RickS

Nice work, Justin! Just looks slightly black clipped as previously commented.

Thanks Rick!

Yep clipped in the black, trying to hide the horrible background.

Cheers,

Justin.

[atalas]

Another nice pic Justin.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by atalas

Another nice pic Justin.

Thanks Louie!

I do find galaxy fields quite difficult to process though.

Cheers,

Justin.