Capturing the Tarantula

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Hi Everyone,

Nice clear night in Melbourne last night - had my first go at capturing the Tarantula Nebula.

Unguided single 30 sec exposure - iso 1000, Nikon D700
There are several more frames to process eventually when I get a stacking program working on the mac.

Interesting object, my kids think it looks kind of spooky!

Thoughts & comments welcome.

Cheers

Andy

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Good detail for 30 sec. exposure,Andy

[scagman (John)]

Hi Andy,

Nice shot. Should come up well when you sort out a stacking program.

Were you using the ED120 for this shot? The reason I ask is you have diffraction spikes, I didn't think they occured on refractors, I thought they were caused by spider vains, etc.

I do like them, them give the stars that twinkle. Just curious.

Cheers.

[ourkind (Carlos)]

Great shot Andy I've been imaging this one too and you've gotten a lot more detail in one image than me in 20! Well done looks great!

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Hi John, yes I was using the ED120.

The diffraction spikes are added in post production.
I like the look of them as well, I think they give the image a pleasing artistic feel, rather than an absolutely accurate scientific look.

As we're all imaging the same objects, it's nice to have some differences.

The action set including diffraction spikes is downloadable - Astronomy tools 1.6
http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/Downloads.html

I've attached a before and after so you can see the original raw file, before I processed it with Photoshop, NIK filters, & The Astronomy tools.

Thanks for the feedback

Andy