M65 and M66 in colour

[Paul Haese]

Originally Posted by RickS

Looks very nice to me too, Paul, at least on my laptop screen. Some of the fatter stars could be dialed back a little but no significant criticisms from me!

Cheers,
Rick.

I will take a look at those stars soon. I am hoping for some clear skies in the next week, so I can pick up a little more data. I think those stars blew ought when I did a medium contrast curves. I forgot to mask them out.

Originally Posted by Shiraz

excellent image Paul - not sure why you would have reservations about it, it has fine detail and low noise levels.

Just very picky now of my own imaging Ray. There is some noise present that I am not happy with and some speckle in the image around the galaxies from a little too much sharpening. Overall I am happy with the image but there is always room for improvement.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

That's a stunner Paul. No real sign of any trouble. You sure do get good seeing at your location. The right galaxy in particular is very stunning. It'd be great to shoot NGC3628 and complete the trilogy.

Your setup seems to be singing.

Greg.

Actually the seeing has been very ratty at Clayton this last six months. I have missed a lot of opportunities to do any planetary imaging as a result too.

The setup needs a little more refining but it is nice to have it collecting data on a regular basis.

Originally Posted by Bassnut

Excellent Paul, so much detail in the galaxies and it just gets better zooming in. Ive seen other processing like this from imaging rock stars, huge extension blurred then dropping suddenly to very detailed cores. Its very effective and attractive.

Yes I have been taking some hints and ideas from those rock stars. I think it is a matter of subtlety with this type of sharpening. I am yet to get that 100% right. If I was using an AOX I can only imagine the detail present.

Originally Posted by mbaddah

Beautiful shot Paul, one of the best I've seen of this region. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the compliment. Martin Pugh's image of this recently is simply spectacular and I encourage you to take a look at it.

[David Fitz-Henr]

Another great image Paul; some nice details in there
A bit over 15 hours worth of data - I hope some of those clear skies are coming to Sydney soon!

[Logieberra (Logan)]

Paul, that's a ripper! Just beautiful. Thanks for sharing. LT.

[ericwbenson (Eric)]

Hey Paul,

I see a strange color gradient in the stars - but not the bgd - from bottom left (Blue) to top right (Red). Or put another way, there are very few red stars in the BL corner, and no blue stars in the TR corner. TL and BR corners have a normal spread in star colours. Is this what you meant by funny gradients? I must say I've never seen this effect before, usually the bgd tint varies along with the star colours, I suppose you were able to process the bgd shift out, but the color balance was still shifted.

Details are quite good in the galactic cores, no need to fool anymore with that.

Best,
EB

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys for the comments.

Originally Posted by ericwbenson

Hey Paul,

I see a strange color gradient in the stars - but not the bgd - from bottom left (Blue) to top right (Red). Or put another way, there are very few red stars in the BL corner, and no blue stars in the TR corner. TL and BR corners have a normal spread in star colours. Is this what you meant by funny gradients? I must say I've never seen this effect before, usually the bgd tint varies along with the star colours, I suppose you were able to process the bgd shift out, but the color balance was still shifted.

Details are quite good in the galactic cores, no need to fool anymore with that.

Best,
EB

Yes is the gradient I was referring about. Something odd happened with the green and red channels. I think high cloud is the problem but my neighbour up the road has been leaving his front garden light on and that might be causing the gradient. I don't really know.