Having fun now

[PKay (Peter)]

The moon was full.
Took my first video (100frames) using the ZWO with Sharpcap and processed it (later) in Pipp, Registax and Pixinsight.

Slewed the scope to Alnitak and took 30 * 1 minute exposure.
20 Darks, Bias and Flats.
Processed in Pixinsight.
Unfortunately, I mixed up file extensions in Sharpcap (.png & .fits) so it all ended up a bit of a mess (the darks were chucked out etc).

Sooo...I plonked the moon over the mess. Problem fixed :-)

I hope I am not going beyond the bounds of IIS in creating a montage...

[kens (Ken)]

Nicely done! I like the creativity.

[billdan (Bill)]

That's a great idea to cover up Alnitak, beats an occult finger any day.

Good work

[Mosc_007 (Charles)]

I like it. My Alnitaks are always over exposed.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

OK, here you go again. Auto levels in CS2, denoised then some subtle Curves to give it some drama ..
And I did some cloning to fix the moon edge a bit

[PKay (Peter)]

Cleverdic

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Hahahahaha.
There is a free version of Adobe Photoshop, CS2 available from http://www.snapfiles.com/ with the license key. Adobe released it a while ago to get people on the upgrade path to the 'real' stuff.
It can handle astro pix easily and is not too difficult to learn. Either that or install GIMP or some reasonably professional graphics software.
What I am doing is quite simple and in some cases automatic and although it probably doesn't appease some of the purists for processing it gets good results quickly and teaches you how it all works.
The application needs to manages histograms ( levels and curves ) and once you get that going I can assist you to do your own easy processing.

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by PKay

I hope I am not going beyond the bounds of IIS in creating a montage...

No, it's ok, it's allowed.
Just be careful when you image like this though since mixing DS objects with SS objects in the same FOV can destroy your mount if your not careful.

RB