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Old 19-12-2011, 02:01 AM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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Red face M42 - Hard to know if i am a beginner or not

Hi All,

Managed to capture on Saturday evening. Was quite committed with cool clear evening. Definitely the weather forecasting sucks at the moment but sure that the rest of the week will have plenty of opportunities.

Managed this capture along with another I will post later. The complexity is related to white-balance as the RAW images are so off. But I hope one day I will be able to set the manual set the camera correctly.

Colour is strong possibly a bit off.

Capture information:
TS-80 480mm FL
Canon450D unmodded
APT software (very handy)
40 x 15 seconds
40 x 30 seconds
40 x 60 seconds
40 x Darks for each
40 x Flats
20 x Bias
all 800 ISO
22-25 degree camera temp.
Deepsky Stacker.
GIMP - Simple masking techniques
Reduced to 25% of original and awful JPG's
A lot of time with a beautiful sky.

Surprise 15 seconds still had a very bright core.
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  #2  
Old 19-12-2011, 02:07 AM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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Made some alterations

The other image is a bit small, here is a larger one.
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  #3  
Old 19-12-2011, 02:17 AM
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Joshua Bunn (Joshua)
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Hi Malcolm.

Nice capture, I like the colours. Sorry i have no useful unput - i have much to learn.

josh
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  #4  
Old 19-12-2011, 02:43 AM
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bmitchell82 (Brendan)
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You have done pretty damn good job there mate!

The only thing that ide comment on and im not sure if its your setup or something that you have done with the processing, but your stars seem... off. The reason why i say this is it looks like you have tried to either mask in or control the main star (which is one of the stars of the handle) but the two just to the upper right of the main star are bigger than it (but they are not normally). So it ends up a bit interesting because your stars are crisp and round but the nebulosity is slightly soft and its normally the opposite

I know its all very nit picking but thats just what i see.

Brendan
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Old 19-12-2011, 03:12 AM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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Thanks Josh

Thx too Brendan. I just realised after you mentioned it, the overlapping of the masks maybe part of the issue. I quite likely needs cropping.

It was a fairly quick process and trying to up load a larger file at the moment.
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Old 19-12-2011, 03:18 AM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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Read a little bit further, I was playing around with methods of sharpening and a feature of GIMP "Wavelet denoise" I feel I may have been a bit excessive on both. Wavelet denoise helps with grainy images which happen a lot with mysetup. There may also be an alignment issue a well.
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Old 19-12-2011, 08:13 AM
eskimo
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are you sure your a begginner?

looks great but!
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Old 20-12-2011, 05:50 AM
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ZeroID (Brent)
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Hi Malcolm, dang nice pic IMHO.
I think you've moved out of the 'Beginners' class and onto the ladder.
Brendan is obviously the expert here and makes good critique.

But I still like the pic, nice colours and detail.

Cheers
Brent
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  #9  
Old 20-12-2011, 11:44 AM
vanwonky (Dave)
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Nice work Malcolm. If I took that I would elevate myself to "godammed expert" status till Brendan rightly knocks the stuffing out of me!
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  #10  
Old 20-12-2011, 11:53 AM
vanwonky (Dave)
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Malcolm, just as a help with my learning curve was there any particular reason behind the timing and amount (and type) of captures. Is it a 'more is better' approach always?
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  #11  
Old 20-12-2011, 01:07 PM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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Thanks for the encouragement all, This was my first attempt to use Layer Mask to remove the glowing effect from the core although I feel there is something still need to be done to improve it. Worked well and have managed to update the image slightly. The problem was the 15 second stack and the 60 second stack are easy to line up as there was a slight angular rotation required. Managed to get something together though and hope to post it on my website as soon as possible.
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  #12  
Old 20-12-2011, 01:54 PM
el_draco (Rom)
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Thats pretty damn good for a "beginner" Well done!
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Old 20-12-2011, 02:31 PM
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renormalised (Carl)
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Well done, Malcolm

Great piccie
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  #14  
Old 20-12-2011, 04:03 PM
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irwjager (Ivo)
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Time to start posting in the Deep Space section I reckon!
That's a great image and I'm pretty amazed you got such a good result using The GIMP, which only does 8-bit stuff.
I think your colors are spot-on too. The neb is maybe a tad soft and the trapezium doesn't completely dissolve, but all-in-all it's a nice image.

Glad at least someone is getting some imaging done!
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  #15  
Old 20-12-2011, 04:30 PM
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bmitchell82 (Brendan)
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No problem mate You will find soon though that Gimp will run out of legs for what it is that astrophotographers do. For some of the reasons to do with Bit depths and the like but actual funtionality.

Keep going once you start really getting your hands into it you learn alot of little things that will help you

Brendan

Quote:
Originally Posted by mswhin63 View Post
Thanks Josh

Thx too Brendan. I just realised after you mentioned it, the overlapping of the masks maybe part of the issue. I quite likely needs cropping.

It was a fairly quick process and trying to up load a larger file at the moment.
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  #16  
Old 20-12-2011, 05:15 PM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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Thanks Brendan, I believe now that I have started full time Uni I could get a student version of PS :smile:
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  #17  
Old 23-12-2011, 01:31 AM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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I think I have done it

Hi All,

Think I have managed to squeeze the best I can from the images. Had done some study on HDR although not the best it is just a start in getting the right processing down the track.

Any further ideas would be great.
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