Ikigai_sky

@pipnina thank you! 😊 I used ISO 800, I think this is the recommended or optimum ISO setting for my 1200D though I havent actually tried at 1600 so that might be interesting to experiment with.

@teoria_del_big_bang thanks so much. I hope that you get some clear skies soon to try adding to your image. I have bottle 6 skies so it isn't ideal. I get issues with light pollution, sometimes it creates quite a gradient in my background which I find difficult to tackle. I think maybe the position of Iris is helping to avoid the gradient effect which I'm happy about 😁 @carastro thank you! I hope so too, looks like I might get the chance this week to have another bash 🤞

Thanks all for your helpful comments and encouragement. @Elp I havent heard of Siril before so this is something for me to have a look into, sounds like a useful tool. @Budgie1 This is fabulous, thank you so much for taking the time to do that it's made a big difference to the image 😁 I've heard of NoiseXTerminator but I don't have any experience of it - something for me to look into. I wondered what your process is for tackling the banding?

Thanks so much for your comment 😊 I'm encouraged that guiding and dithering will make a good difference to the noise level. Hopefully PHD2 will work for me next time - I turned out to have a wrong guide rate setting in EQMOD. Thanks for the encouragement!

Hello All, Very much a beginner to this hobby. I got my first telescope last year but didn't have much chance to use it due to lack of clear skies In the past I've been guilty of 'kid in a sweet shop' syndrome, imaging a bit of this and bit of that 😁 This year I wanted to try and focus on a project and try to do it well. I've picked the Iris Nebula and I've started collecting data over the past couple of weeks. I'm aiming to include about 15-20 hours of exposure time in the hope that this might bring out some more of the dust detail. I am using Affiinity Photo for processing and DSS for stacking. I've included my most recent process in the hope of getting some feedback and any words of wisdom. This is 6 hours 28 minutes exposure time. I had some issues in getting my guidiing set up so these exposures were not guided or dithered. Hopefully this issue will be resolved for my next imaging session. I've found colour balance and noise to be the biggest challenges when processing. I also think my focus could have been better. Any advice for this target, processing or general wisdom for working on a project like this is much appreciated. ✨ Skywatcher 80ED with 0.85 reducer flattener HEQ 5 (belt modified) Canon 1200D (unmodified) ISO800 213 x 75s 122 x 60 s 30 x flats 100 x bias