NGC6188 - First shot in over 4 years

[AstroBogan (Jacob)]

Hi all,

Finally got some clear skies! This image is the first light of my William Optics ZS81 and ASI533MC Pro, which also happens to be my first astro image in over 4 years!!

Only managed to get 1 hour 20 mins of data before the clouds rolled in, consisting of 16 light frames @ 5 mins each with calibration frames.

Not the best photo editor, so any advice would be appreciated.

Highly recommend you go check out the high res image here: https://www.astrobin.com/dczmk9/

[xelasnave]

Given you have had a four year lay off you have done very well and I am not skilled enough to offer you any advice. I certainly hope you can post more images soon and that we don't have to wait four years.
Alex

[PKay (Peter)]

Hi Jacob

What you have acheived is very good.
After a 4 year layoff, you may have had to 'start again'.
As you know, the technicalities are at times overbearing.

Next time, spend your first few subs in framing (in your case, up a bit) and then focusing.
Maybe even rotate the scope if you have to (this requires you take new flats & darks).

And of course, more data!
Keep a reliable backup and then add to it over the years.
10 hours on 6188 would work with your scope.

Achieving star colour is not easy, gain and sub length play a role.
Try different settings and see what works for you.


Great effort

[AstroBogan (Jacob)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Given you have had a four year lay off you have done very well and I am not skilled enough to offer you any advice. I certainly hope you can post more images soon and that we don't have to wait four years.
Alex

Hi Alex,
Thank you so much for the kind words. I've been super impressed with your images since I was last around this forum. You've improved immensely over the years, well done to you too

Originally Posted by PKay

Hi Jacob

What you have acheived is very good.
After a 4 year layoff, you may have had to 'start again'.
As you know, the technicalities are at times overbearing.

Next time, spend your first few subs in framing (in your case, up a bit) and then focusing.
Maybe even rotate the scope if you have to (this requires you take new flats & darks).

And of course, more data!
Keep a reliable backup and then add to it over the years.
10 hours on 6188 would work with your scope.

Achieving star colour is not easy, gain and sub length play a role.
Try different settings and see what works for you.


Great effort

Hi Peter, Thank you so much for the tips. For a night that was supposed to be me just learning the gear, I was stoked to even get 1 hour and 20 mins worth of data.
I tried to get my framing directly out of Telescopius and had it uploaded into the ASIair plus, and it was just very slightly off where I wanted it (perhaps I had my settings slightly wrong on telescopius) but was just too impressed with the OSC camera that I kept going Going from a 1600mm pro years ago to a 533mc pro makes it so much easier for me. No messing about with multiple filters (though i'd suspect i'll go mono again in the near future )

I had planned on at least 3 hours last night and another 3 hours tonight, but plans have changed so I will have to add to it over time. I'll post again on this area once I have more data.

Thanks again

[xelasnave]

Good point re framing as it seemed to me that the dragons could be included just a little more.

What I like to do is select a short exposure time say 1500 mil.ses and turn gain up to max to check framing and focus even... and that usually shows nebulosity that you may wish to include but just remember to change back to appropriate imaging settings as there have been times where I forgot started my session and come back to find I have wasted half an hour or more with test subs, and on that point it is worthwhile looking at the first couple of images I often stack the first six ( 30 sec subs here) in Deep Sky Stacker and brighten and darken the final image to see how things are going...

Edit addition.

Thanks for your kind words Jacob.
Alex

[Dave882 (David)]

Great to see you’ve got the rig up and running again after so much time and look forward to more to come!! Well done

[AstroBogan (Jacob)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Good point re framing as it seemed to me that the dragons could be included just a little more.

What I like to do is select a short exposure time say 1500 mil.ses and turn gain up to max to check framing and focus even... and that usually shows nebulosity that you may wish to include but just remember to change back to appropriate imaging settings as there have been times where I forgot started my session and come back to find I have wasted half an hour or more with test subs, and on that point it is worthwhile looking at the first couple of images I often stack the first six ( 30 sec subs here) in Deep Sky Stacker and brighten and darken the final image to see how things are going...

Edit addition.

Thanks for your kind words Jacob.
Alex

Thanks for the tips Alex, will definitely take them into account for the next session

Originally Posted by Dave882

Great to see you’ve got the rig up and running again after so much time and look forward to more to come!! Well done

Thanks Dave, much appreciated!

Side note - I am also located in Padstow what a small world!

[AstroBogan (Jacob)]

Decided to try different methods of processing and came out with this revision. I think I was able to bring out much more colour this time round, and hopefully with more data I can bring out a lot more nebulosity with it all!!

I also added artificial diffraction spikes because I think it looks pretty cool

High res: https://www.astrobin.com/dczmk9/#rB

Also realised 5 min subs might be too much for the un-belt modded heq5 pro, so might limit the exposure length next time around.

[xelasnave]

Good on you ...

I will share with you a little thing which is considered cheating by some...but try the dodge and burn tools in photo shop or in gimp..go very delicately by setting the exposure way down but with these tools you can selectively brighten or darken selected areas defined by a circle that you can resize big or small. Be careful as they are very powerful tools and as it is wuth things of power go gently...with practice you will find these tools very handy for tweeking an image.

If you don't have Photoshop and given how xy it is these days understandable then download GIMP...it's free and the people behind it seem to be on a mission to be better than Photoshop...but you will find it handy for many things...and there are some excellent tutorials on YouTube even how to process astro photos.

Now the other thing when you are bored..do various tweaks in photo shop or Gimp and then layer them and using the rubber tool bring the best of one image into the other..do many versions and repeat until all objectively has left your thinking


Alex

[AstroBogan (Jacob)]

With all the cloudy nights in Sydney i've had a chance to practice more processing techniques and was able to get some more SHO practice using my OSC and a dual-band filter. I mixed in some of my other processing versions in photoshop and came out with this version.

I've definitely over-processed it, but I really like the colours!

Full res HERE