AF - Jewel Box, gem of the Southern Sky

Greg Bock (Greg Bock) · #1 24-08-2012, 03:21 PM

Hi all,
I only spent 2 nights imaging at Qld Astrofest this year, so not a lot of images I'm afraid.
I've always wanted to capture the colours of the Jewel Box and surrounding star field nicely, but I've never been happy with the result.
So hopefully, I 've managed to do it this time.
RGB image consists of 11 mins for each R,G, and B, where each colour is 11 subframes of 1 minute each( to avoid pixel saturation and colour loss).
Taken through my Intes MN61 (150mmF6) with an ST2000XM at Astrofest.
Processed in MaximDL.
I've included a crop of the original at full resolution as well.
As usual, comments and feedback welcome.

Larryp (Laurie) · #2 24-08-2012, 03:24 PM

Very nice!

strongmanmike (Michael) · #3 24-08-2012, 03:32 PM

For a nerdy geeky SN hunter that is quite excellent Mr Bock

Mike

RB (Andrew) · #4 24-08-2012, 03:50 PM

That *is* quite good indeed Greg.

Andrew

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #5 24-08-2012, 05:27 PM

the star colour is lovely Greg.

h0ughy (David) · #6 24-08-2012, 08:17 PM

so you did image after all - nice jewels

allan gould · #7 25-08-2012, 08:03 AM

Difficult object to image well.
Looks great to me

peter_4059 (Peter) · #8 26-08-2012, 08:38 AM

Nicely done Greg. It sure is tough to get a good balance between depth and retaining star colours.

Greg Bock (Greg Bock) · #9 28-08-2012, 12:40 AM

Thanks Guys,
yes, this one is hard to get right due to the big contrast difference between the bright bluish stars of the cluster and the faint background stars.
Nerdy?? Geeky??..yup, that's me i guess, i've been known on more than one occasion to be repairing bad solder joints at 2am on the ground under the scope when it's 0 degrees, or downloading drivers on a mobile phone in the middle of a cow paddock at Leyburn just to keep imaging. And of course there was that time that i forgot to take the USB to Serial adaptor with me to Leyburn, so i drove back home at 7:30pm to pick it up and arrived back at 1am to image for the rest of the night....or maybe just plain 'stupid' would be a better description!!

SkyViking (Rolf) · #10 31-08-2012, 08:59 PM

That's a really nice image Greg, it has great star colours and depth.
There are not enough cluster images out there I think.