Ngc3372

[Insane Climber (Jason)]

Hello all

Just another noob pic from me. Looking for advice again.
This pic is 44 x 30sec exposures at ISO 400, unguided. Taken with an Olympus e-300 8" Newt and an HEQ5 pro. I have been working on the Photoshop trick to mask stars in one layer and adjust color channels to bring out nebulously I then blend another layer of pin sharp stars over top. My problem is i am starting to get very unnatural looking pics that look nice but do not give an accurate representation of what is real. Please advise?

Cheers in advance
Jas

1st pic is 44stacked images, second and third are useing the method i mentioned above

[bluescope]

Hi Jason ... the first thing I would suggest is that iso400 is too slow for a 40 sec exposure. Try going to at least iso800 and see how things pan out.
Also try and get a better polar alignment, you have a fair bit of movement in your stars in this image ... maybe cut your exposures to 30 seconds. Stack your images in a program like DeepSkyStacker ... it's free and allows you to do basic processing before going to PS for a final adjustment.

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

[Insane Climber (Jason)]

Thanks for the tips Steve. I will give that deepskystacker a try tonight. ISO800 seems to give a lot of noise with my camera, I new there was a reason it was so cheap. Not to worry though I'm just learning. As for alignment, gee that has been a hard thing to learn, i keep getting things back to front and round the wrong way. Its all good fun though.