My first (semi) succesful DSO

[ryandsimmons]

And after a few days of trials and tribulations and an extremely steep learning curve I have produced my first picture that I am happy with.

Obviously there is massive amounts that I need to "fix" but as a proof of concept I am extremely happy to at least have something that looks like a bad quality picture as opposed to something that doesn't even resemble anything.

I have included my steps that I used throughout, if anyone can suggest anything obvious for me to add to improve things I would greatly appreciate it.  Currently the picture has a swathe of light surrounding the nebula that I cannot fully remove without affecting the nebula itself, and it is very grainy with stars being globular, but it is a start.

Equip:

Celestron C8 on a CG5 GOTO

Unmodified EOS1000d

Imaging:

2 star align

4 calibration stars (maximum allowed)

30 second exposures x 35

10 x 30 second darks

Fairly light polluted skies with a full moon

Have to manual press camera shutter, 10 second timer.  (I really really really need a bulb remote and / or a laptop.)

ISO 800

Focusing also took maybe 40 minutes.... Live View plus trying to use Bhatinov filter is very slow and difficult.

Stacking:

Deep Sky Stacker

24 succesful images stacked.

No histography amended in DSS as all 3 mountains lined up already.

Saved as 70 meg Tif

GIMP:

In Colour levels, moved left and right sliders to start of "mountains" for each colour (Technical term?)

In colour levels on the black / white slider moved slider to the right a fair bit as the image was far too bright, I moved it until it was fairly dark.

In Curves I only changed things very slightly as the natural curve was about the best I could get.

I also tried (and failed) to do a duplicate stack, Guassian Blur and then Subtract as per a walkthrough I found online but all that did was remove the nebula totally.

Image then saved as JPG.  Then opened / resized in Paint to make it under 1 Meg for upload.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

That is a decent start. It seems the main issues are that you need flats to counter vignetting, and simply more data to bring out more detail. M1 is not the easiest target (you could try M81, much better surface brightness)

[ryandsimmons]

I did try M81 the night before, but it was just too close to the moon to get anything usable.  One for in a few weeks.  The Crab is also looking over some trees as opposed to houses from my south facing garden so in theory should get less light pollution and heat haze.  I was trying to find something near the zenith to photograph but that really is an empty part of the sky!

With any luck I will be able to get another 50 odd exposures tonight to add to the stack.  Thanks for the advice on Flats, not something I have even looked into yet!  I will definitely read up and try and add some.

[jarlaxle2k5]

Another nice target is M3.

Clusters in general are easy to image.

Try it when you can

[tingting44]

grats on your 1st semi!!

onwards and upwards

[Carina Lass]

I've never been very successful with M1 as there's not many guide stars around it visible to an off axis guider - I'll have to try again with my new guide system

Yours is a good start - needs more data but don't knock it - also a few flats I think

[Pete Presland]

a nice start, agreed definitely some calibration frames will help.

[Albaba]

Good start, keep at it

[Hackleby]

Great first effort, same starting issues as me, same imaging process and same camera.  Yet to image with flats so can only offer that I too was advised by members on here to use them.

I picked up a (bulb remote) from ebay, £14.49 brand new and it allows for delay, exposer time, intervals and exposer numbers.  Ideal to set up your imaging session.

Link http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Time-Lapse-Intervalometer-Remote-Timer-Shutter-fr-Canon-EOS-60D-550D-1000D-1100D-/221359439063?pt=UK_Photography_DigitalCamAccess_RL&hash=item338a0cfcd7

I was also advised to build a library of darks to cut down on imaging time, this will free up the time now required for taking flats.