After reading Matt's comment in my other thread of Deep Sky with a Toucam: "Is there any way you could push the curves and/or levels just to bring out the neb just a fraction more?", I was determined to get more of the Nebulosity.
But rather than squeek more out of poor images, I put a lot more time and effort into the 'capturing'.
Last night I went out at approx 10pm and came in at 5:30am this morning and I must say, I had a fantastic time! And I captured my best images yet!!!
I made sure I was exactly polar aligned, I played with settings in 'Desire', did longer exposures and stacked multiple images (a first for me).
I am very very pleased (and suprised) at the results! They are much improved on my last efforts.
And some say a Toucam can't do this
All captured with ED80, Modified Toucam 840k Pro II, captured in Desire. Nebulas stacked in Registax and processed in PaintShop Pro. Omega Cent stacked in DeepSky Stacker.
1. Omega Centaurus - 4 x 20 seconds
2. Trifid Nebula - 5 x 30 seconds
3. Carina Nebula - 6 x 40 seconds
4. Orion Nebula 10 x 60 seconds
No Matt, I never take your comments as critisism. You were right, the old pic needed something. Yeah, they were all single images, but these one I learnt to stack.
I have seen better images of DSO's on the net with the modded Toucam, but its just a buzz when I actually got pretty good results myself.
Great stuff Ken. Keep at it,... as good as they all are I know you can take it higher still . It seems you have a nice dark sky there so you may find you can get longer exposures . I dont know if noise prevents longer exposures with your cam , but if you can get your polar alignment so good and if sky glow or noise is not a problem go longer . With Orion may I suggest to add some short exposures to help define the trap area as you will probably burn that area out with longer exposures to reveal further nebulosity. Very impressive it took me ages to get to the level you have stepped up to..keep it up .
alex
I've tried every setting imaginable and after a certain time noise shows up. Just the nature of the Toucam I guess.
The Orion neb shows burnt out centre after only 2 - 3 seconds! and at that timing no nebula is visible. Anything over 5 seconds and stars start to bloat too.
Just for the fun of it, here is a composition of my above Orion and one of my old Trap shots resized to match and blended in PaintShop Pro
Gee's Ken you do magic with that little toucam of yours, you sure your not tricking us.
Well done Mate. Leon
Leon, you have stood there and watched me do it More than once. And that was with the EQ1!!!! Now I've got the EQ6 I'm pushing every level with the poor little Toucam
Above I mentioned that I also took a pic of the Lagoon nebula but it didn't come out any good.
I have given it another run through stacking. This time I tried 'Deep Sky Stacker' (thanks Alex), but it hasn't improved. As I said above, "some ya win, some ya lose".
