Cygnus at 50mm

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Took my rig out again Tuesday night for its first imaging run without a bright moon to contend with. Here's my first proper go at Cygnus, hope you like it.

Unmodded 1100D, 50mm lens at f4, 17x2minute subs (34 minutes total) at ISO 800, 30 dark bias, 10 darks. No flats.

Managed to get the framing I wanted this time with the Milky Way running from upper-right to lower-left, and with open clusters M39 and NGC7082 at the bottom one third from the left.

Didn't get as much data as I hoped for as dew stopped play. Still, I'm pretty happy with it, I'm definitely making progress. So far I've only used DSS to process it. The bottom right is a bit bright and misty, unfortunately that's London. I could write to Boris asking him to switch it off - and being Boris there is a non-zero chance he might do so - but gradient processing might be a better bet. There is a little bit of colour hiding in there, the Sadr region and 'Mexico' have a touch of red. Boosting the saturation brings it out more but leaves the rest of the image looking odd. Perhaps if I can apply flats and remove the gradient first boosting the colours will be more successful.

Next steps: flats, and I'm going to give the demo of Star Tools a go.

Any suggestions for improvement would be welcome.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice one. I have yet to get round to use my modded 450D for this kind of shot (had we but world enough and time...). I would be very pleased with such a result

[ChrisLX200]

That's a lot of stars! And I can see some of the targets I want to go for when I get chance. Love these wide-field shots.

ChrisH

[Psychobilly]

My fav bit of sky... maybe becasue I have spent more time in Cygnus than just about anywhere else...

Nice job on the framing and focusing..

There's some colour in there waiting to be teased out...

Peter...

[jgs001]

Love it, huge FOV, and I'm lost in there, so many stars.

[Adamar98]

That looks great. Just look at all them stars! I agree with Peter about the colour. You had the reds coming through on your other image.

[laser_jock99]

Looks a bit monochromatic- but otherwise really good.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks all, I'm happy with the result but there are, I think, a couple problems with it. Comparing it with other images, the bottom right corner is a bit too bright and the upper left too dark - this may just be a gradient due to light pollution. The other is that when I try boosting the saturation to bring out the nebulosity the lower right turns red (again, consistent with LP), but the bottom middle of the image turns very blue (?).

I took some more subs last night and some flats so I'll try adding those to the stack.

There's some colour in there waiting to be teased out...

Yes, looking at the individual subs the Ha regions are standing out more than in the stacked image, so something isn't quite right.

I had a random flail around with the Star Tools demo last night, and I'll have a go with the Pixinsight demo over the weekend.

[Psychobilly]

The images out of DSS will usually look desaturated but the colour will be there and can be teased out ...

What other Processing software do you have available? Depending what you have it might be better to do it in DSS the other program - It all depends on what bit depth the packages work at...

Peter...

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I only have an old version of Photoshop (CS2) and GIMP. I believe the former is OK on colour depth, but I'm not sure about GIMP. I've tried boosting the saturation in both DSS and PS with limited success. I'll try adding Thursday's data and see if that helps.

[Pete Presland]

cracking shot, i am sure with a little experimentation you can tease some colour out.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Had a bit more of a play and have produced a new version, Houston we have (a little) colour!

Tried adding some flats but that didn't work out, so I'll have to retake them. I then restacked with Thursday's data added, giving 50 minutes in total. This probably helped to bring out the colours but introduced some other problems. DSS rates my Thursday subs lower and counts fewer stars. This is probably because my focus was a little off and it was about ten degrees hotter. Stacking in intersection mode I've lost some of the frame, and I had to crop out some more due to odd shaped stars at the edges (I think because a different focus point also changes the magnification).

Here's an oversaturated version of the new stack showing the gradients and stacking artifacts.

I'm pretty sure yellow at lower-right is LP. I used selective colour adjustment in PS to balance it up and then reduced the saturation again and sharpened the final image. Really I need a gradient removal tool, but I suspect I need to apply some decent flats first.

[RT65CB-SWL]

Damn it! I lost count.

Nice photos though.