M45 Jpg

My second astrophotography image taken in October 2014 from Hertfordshire with my ED80 in a non permanent set up, manually focused using the stock focuser (a process that I don't miss). I reprocessed the image in November 2015. The combination of dubious flat frames (taken with a white T shirt), no dithering and a site with medium light pollution meant that I had to spend quite a bit of effort fixing flaws in post processing. I also decided to give the image a boost by adding two subframes (2 x 300s) from my present location which is in a low light pollution area. The nebulosity was mainly extracted using DDP and a PS Screen Mask invert techniques. Given the quality of the subframes, I was quite pleased with the result. I now take my flats with an EL panel and always dither, this combination gives a noticeable improvement. Calibrated in MAXIM DL and stacked with CCDstack2+ with post processing in PS CC 2015. LIGHTS: 17 x 600s + 2 x 300s. DARKS: 30, BIAS: 50, FLATS:40.