M8

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Are you sick of the Lagoon Neb yet?
I finally got around to processing this one from the 9th of September.
Taken through the 8"newt, mounted on the Tower of Terror
Canon 20d, Baadar mpcc filter.
Bit of a mix up with the subs.
24x18sec @ ISO800
86x18sec @ ISO1600
So 110 subs for a total of only 33 minutes exposure.
I only used the iso 1600 darks
What else....
Stacked in DSS
Levels adjustment and quite heavily cropped in CS3.
No other processing.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Nice piccie considering the shortness of the individual subs

Will do better with longer subs.

[javier alves (Javier)]

very nice jeanette,
regards.

[Nightskystargaz (Thomas)]

Jeanette,

, nice pic. I'm looking for some more.

,

Tom

[batema (Mark)]

How accomodating is Dreamworld to let you use the Tower of Terror to mount you scope. Looks good.

Mark

[multiweb (Marc)]

Very nicely done. Round stars and good colors. Might want to try longer subs but you got some good details already.

[Hagar (Doug)]

Nice image JJ. I never get sick of this target but it is quite a challenging target. You may be able to pull a bit more out of this but you would have to create a mask of the stars and then work on the nebula alone.

Great to see another M8. Well done.

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Wow - nice result and dedication! The TOT is doing ok for the load, nice round stars.

[Inmykombi (Geoff)]

loads of detail there JJJ.
Nice work although it could be a bit darker....maybe just my monitor though.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Good shot Jeanette - tower of terror though?

Dave

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Not bad Big J smooth and delicate, just like a dreamy lagoon should be

It actually looks like the focus may have not bee spot on..? How do you focus?

Mike

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Thanks for looking everyone.
I focus just by eye, taking 6 sec subs at iso 3200. And adjust as necessary.

ahh yes. "The Tower of Terror" or the "TOT" = iOptron Mini Tower
Christened inadvertently by the Strong Man.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Originally Posted by Hagar

Nice image JJ. I never get sick of this target but it is quite a challenging target. You may be able to pull a bit more out of this but you would have to create a mask of the stars and then work on the nebula alone.

Great to see another M8. Well done.

I have a tutorial on how to do that, and actually made a start on it this weekend.
But there's no getting passed the fact that you can't make good pics using such short subs.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Jeanette,

That's a great effort. Now that you've got your autoguiding equipment, you'll be able to create a spectacular rendition of this perhaps next year.

I guess you'll also be easing back on the ISO now that you'll be guiding? It will do wonders for your images.

Regards,
Humayun

[Tandum (Robin)]

Jeanette has a mount that is guideable I missed that one ... Go for it jeanie ... I bet you now have nothing but problems like the rest of us

[spearo (Frank)]

JJJ
looks good
There is a lot of great data in there,
can I very humbly suggest you try the following in CS3?:
go into Image, adjustements, levels
fin dthe eyedrop icon for black (the one on the left, click on it an then go to a far left hand point in your image about mid heith and click on some dark area that should be dark background

this will darken your image by setting a dark point
don't panic (like i did the first time i did this)
then go to the levels slide and adjust the middle one towards the left
likewise but less so with the white marker
you can do the same with only selecting the red channel


you'll see the redness come right out

of course you can do all this after inverting a selection on highlights which will protect your stars from being altered but either way you'll see what i mean, there's a huge amount of data in there already!
well done
frank