M45

[alan4908]

It's just over one year since I started astrophotography, so I decided to have a go at reprocessing my second astrophotography target (M45) which was taken in October 2014.  As a bit of background, at the time,  I hadn't yet implemented dithering and was imaging from a medium light pollution environment in Hertfordshire on my portable ED 80 set up. The other major differences from today was that I was manually focusing using the standard ED 80 focuser and taking FLATS via the white T shirt technique.  After examining the subframes my conclusion is that implementing dithering and taking good quality FLATS can yield a substantial quality difference.

Anyway, back to the present to apply my not so vast 13 month experience of PS post processing to some rather dubious quality subframes.  Time to bring out the PS context aware healing brush and other tools.....

LIGHTS 17 x 600s + 2 x 300s; DARKS: 30, BIAS 50, FLATS:40.

Alan

[MarsG76]

Excellent, well done in picking/stretching out so much nebulosity.

[alan4908]

MarsG76 - Thanks for the comment, it is quite a difficult object to post process process, particularly if you have light pollution gradients on the subframes 

Alan

[laudropb]

Very nice image, well processed. Thanks for posting.

[alan4908]

Laudropb

Thanks for the comment.

When I compare this image to my original post processing result, I think my PS post processing skills have advanced the most during the last year. However, I still find post processing to be the most challenging but perhaps the most rewarding part of astrophotography.

Alan