M33 at Queensland Astrofest 2013

[firstlight (Tony)]

Hi everyone,

Here is my take of M33 from the Queensland Astrofest this year. I'm still very much feeling my way around colour balancing and processing but I think I have a halfway reasonable image, and one I'm proud of.

Modded 450D, WO 110 Megrez, 0.8x WO type 2 flattener/reducer, 12 x 600 sec subs @ ISO 1600, not enough darks and 20 flats. Processed in Pixinsight, and Photoshop CS5.

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice work, Tony!

[allan gould]

M33 is faint and you have done well to capture it with a DSLR. Nice image.

[ozstronomer (Geoff)]

Good Capture Tony

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

That looks really nice Tony. The star colours are great.

[firstlight (Tony)]

Thanks Rick, Allan, Geoff, and Jeanette. I haven't controlled the noise with darks very well so my processing probably suffers a lot. I have done a couple of repros this evening. The first is a more heavy handed approach and the second is a blend of the two.

To be honest I can't tell if I have rendered the colours well here, but I (at least) find them pleasing to the eye.

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Looks good to me Tony. Great definition, nice round stars, nice colours and not over-processed. Maybe a slight gradient coming from the bottom left - Pixinsight DBE would easily sort that out.

[Ross G]

A great looking galaxy photo Tony.

Ross.

[TimberLand (Justin)]

Top job Tony, great detail, you are really ringing the neck of that DSLR, good guiding too with the 10 min subs.

Looks like I'm heading back to PixInsight as well, it seems they have fixed the crashing issue I had on my computer.

Justin

[firstlight (Tony)]

Thanks Peter, Ross and Justin. I'm pretty happy with the result, it is just that I did such a poor job with the darks this year.

Peter I used DBE to try and remove the gradient but it is not a sky glow issue, its noise from poor darks.

Justin I had a great Astrofest and got a few good images, I'll work on them when I have time. I appreciate your feedback. As