X2 mono last night 4.3" @ f7

[f15p5]

Here are a couple of images from last night. Transparency was excellent, seeing good, 1/2 moon up.

No guiding, post processing etc. Used an old Lumicon Deep sky filter.

All done in "linear" mode, the other two wash everything out. More images can be seen in my X2mono gallery.

[Paul81]

Nice captures! Looks like you have some spot on settings, especially for linear mode.

I think a few people are still getting to grips with the non-linear histogram stretches, I hope to have some time over the coming bank holiday weekend to do some tutorial videos (plus work on the V0.12 upgrades).

[Dom543]

I particularly like that you manage to keep the stars nice small and not letting them to overpower the more delicate DSO's.

--Dom

[f15p5]

Thanks Paul and Dom. I try to keep the signal as far left in the histo, lightly clip it from the left, keep white all the way right. Brightness all the way left or close to it, just enough to show full signal. Black/white around .2 to .25 to keep noise down. Any tips on non linear modes would be greatly appreciated. Want to thank HiloDon for suggesting mean stacking, seems best for noise reduction. Under stacking I keep max pixel displacement at 3 to try and keep round stars. I find at 5 they can start getting out of shape when stacking. First image is at 5, second at 3.

[HiloDon]

Very nice, Richard!  It's amazing what these Lodestars can do with small inexpensive scopes and mounts.

The non-linear stretches require other adjustments to work, so Paul's tutorials should be helpful to all of us who use LL.  Wonder what's new in v0.12?  LL just keeps getting better and better.

Don

[Dom543]

For comparison, here are three versions of my first attempt to use nonlinear DR mappings. They are all based on the exact same data.

First linear.

Fourth root.

Arsinh.

As said, these are only first tries and I am not particularly proud of them. On that night I wanted to do something else so I didn't spend much time plying with settings for these images. They may also be slightly out of focus.

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[Peter Drew]

Great images for 4.3". Query M51 for the second image, looks like M101 to me ?    

[f15p5]

yes 101, did not change in LL before hitting save. Dom, those are better than the ones I got trying the other two methods!  Like the 81/82!