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  #1  
Old 28-01-2008, 06:35 PM
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theodog (Jeff)
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Ngc5128

Hi All,

Gotta get me nightly hit of imagin'.

Through moon and high cloud I obtained;
36x5minL 1 dark
3x5min RGB 2x2binned 1 dark
Lum's stacked with Deepsky Stacker.
Colour combined with MaximDL and then fiddled and cropped.
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  #2  
Old 28-01-2008, 09:31 PM
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Not a bad effort considering the conditions Chris, probably a little over cropped, but that is my opinion only, however well done.

Leon
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  #3  
Old 28-01-2008, 09:52 PM
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multiweb (Marc)
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Nice. What did you use for tracking over 5min? What kind of Auto-guiding?
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Old 28-01-2008, 10:27 PM
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Hi Jeff, very up close imaging but nice, it looks like you are picking up the finer details of the dust lane

Cheers
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Old 28-01-2008, 10:40 PM
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Overall I like the image and would be very happy with the result if it were mine. However, some comments to perhaps promote improvement:

There appears to be a bit of a magenta cast on the top left, but a green cast on the bottom right? I'm not quite sure what would cause that, but it looks like the colouring could be improved by some further processing in something like photoshop to "balance out" the colour across the image.

The dust lane through the centre shows excellent detail, I'm particularly interested in the slight colouration to the right end of the dust lane which looks interesting. I wonder if a very slight unsharpen applied to the dust lane area would be beneficial? (using a mask to only apply it to the dust lane perhaps).

Finally, it looks like you suffer from a similar problem as I do much of the time - focal length being slightly longer than desired. The slight blurryness of the stars suggests that for the viewing conditions you might have been better at 2x2 than 1x1 binning, it seems the viewing conditions weren't quite up to 1x1? However, no matter how many times people tell me this, I usually ignore it and would do 1x1

I wonder if a few more dark frames would've helped you smooth out the noise a little more (perhaps 10 darks, 10 bias).

Nice tracking, nice amount of exposure data (36 lum), great detail in that dust lane, pretty good low level of noise.

As I said before, nice image, and one I'd be happy with myself
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  #6  
Old 28-01-2008, 10:43 PM
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Nice detail in the dust lane.
Is is really 3 hours of lum and only 45 total of colour?
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  #7  
Old 28-01-2008, 11:20 PM
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Things to fix:, gradients, colour balance & focus.

Nailed it: tracking...dead nuts on!

Stick with it!

Peter
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  #8  
Old 29-01-2008, 05:55 AM
jase (Jason)
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A fine effort Jeff. You've acquired plenty of data to play with. As Peter points out, colour balance would really make the difference on this image.
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  #9  
Old 29-01-2008, 07:41 AM
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theodog (Jeff)
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Thanks all for the feedback, it was appreciated.
Yes, I agree with every comment. Will try harder next time.

The subs were auto guided as a sequence of 3x(12x5min)L. hence 36.

Quote:
Originally Posted by multiweb View Post
Nice. What did you use for tracking over 5min? What kind of Auto-guiding?
The guiding is performed by MaximDL CCD. It is easy to set up and use.
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  #10  
Old 29-01-2008, 08:51 AM
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rogerg (Roger)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by theodog View Post
Yes, I agree with every comment. Will try harder next time.
Personally I don't think it's about trying harder, trying too hard is no fun in my book , it's just about doing it again and you always improve with time/attempts.

Last edited by rogerg; 29-01-2008 at 09:35 AM.
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  #11  
Old 29-01-2008, 12:30 PM
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Good going jeff,its a steep learning curve sometimes but it keeps the old grey matter exercised doesn,t it
Keep it up
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  #12  
Old 29-01-2008, 12:44 PM
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Hi Jeff
Yep very good tracking there. Nice deep image too.
How long are the guiding exposures, just a few seconds I take it?

Hope you dont mind but I used Gradient xterminator PS plugin to even up the background.

With a dslr or indeed any big chip imager gradients can be a real pain particularily in the city and not at the zenith, Gradient Xterminator usually works very well, it can even up both the background intensity and the colour.
Scott
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  #13  
Old 29-01-2008, 01:36 PM
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marc4darkskies (Marcus)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by theodog View Post
Through moon and high cloud I obtained;
36x5minL 1 dark
3x5min RGB 2x2binned 1 dark
Lum's stacked with Deepsky Stacker.
Colour combined with MaximDL and then fiddled and cropped.
Be proud Jeff - a fine image. I'd agree with the others though - back off on the cropping a tad and spend more time to process out the noise - I'd expect you have enough Lum data for that.

Cheers, Marcus
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