Gem Cluster

[Zubenel (Wes)]

The Gem Cluster NGC3293 . One of the loveliest little Open clusters in the Southern Sky.This is a stack of 539 lights and 10 darks . Each frame was 2.5 sec giving at total exposure time of 22.4 min.A tweek on the curves in Gimp2 but that's about it. I was hoping to capture a hint of underlying nebula which extends from Eta Carina but that may have to wait for non LP skies. The Red giant V361 gives a nice colour contrast similar to DU Crux in "The headlights" of the the Jewel box.

[PKay (Peter)]

Good one Wes

You certainly have captured a good variety of star types.

A result of such short exposures I guess.

I wonder what would be the result of stacking say...only 50 of the short subs?

[Atmos (Colin)]

The star colours are lovely
You might struggle capturing the background nebula areas with 2.5s exposures though.

[xelasnave]

Great result.
Have another go and try a little more exposure...little steps all the time consolidating your experience to take you a little further.
I think the stars are brilliant.
Funny when I opened the photo I only saw the top left corner and a thought...thats a lot of effort for a few stars☺ but man did I get a surprise when I realised your stars were a little scroll away.
Great result you csn be very proud of the final result.
Alex

[Zubenel (Wes)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Great result.
Have another go and try a little more exposure...little steps all the time consolidating your experience to take you a little further.
I think the stars are brilliant.
Funny when I opened the photo I only saw the top left corner and a thought...thats a lot of effort for a few stars☺ but man did I get a surprise when I realised your stars were a little scroll away.
Great result you csn be very proud of the final result.
Alex

Alex , I will have another crack at 10 Sec/ shot and see what comes. For now I might hand pick the best 50 as Pkay suggests

[Zubenel (Wes)]

Pkay~"I wonder what would be the result of stacking say...only 50 of the short subs?"
I have hand selected 50 of the best with 50 darks in Sequator. Uncropped with a very slight curve adjustment, that's it. What do you think?

[gaseous (Patrick)]

Some really fabulous colours there Wes!

[PKay (Peter)]

Hi Wes

You certainly have captured the colours well.
The processing is a bit different (I guess), the new image looks like you have pushed the saturation further and cropped a bit more.

However I think it shows that for a star field, at least it is not necessary to take hundreds of subs.

To get the nebula, yes and with much longer exposure time.

Then the trick is to combine the two resulting images, and then you get both!

Note the word 'combine'. It is a different process to 'integrate'.

And I'm sure the more experienced will add there thoughts

[doppler (Rick)]

Nice work with that big boy scope, short exposures certainly bring out the different star colours. Out of curiosity what iso are you using for your captures. I have found that with my 1100d canon I can get away with much higher iso's when using very short exposures, especially on brighter objects.

[Zubenel (Wes)]

Originally Posted by doppler

Nice work with that big boy scope, short exposures certainly bring out the different star colours. Out of curiosity what iso are you using for your captures. I have found that with my 1100d canon I can get away with much higher iso's when using very short exposures, especially on brighter objects.

I can’t push past ISO 1600 as noise becomes intolerable .

PKay, I see what you are saying about the number of subs . I was genuinely amazed . Post editing is a learning curve that will hopefully improve . .......