Backyard Space Dude

Really love this, those that go the distance to grab this always put the bat in as well. So it’s really nice to see just the squid on its own, it really is fantastic!

Gorgeous. The colour is very well produced. Makes me excited to see what I can get with my new Esprit 100!

Wow! It’s so detailed, and the core is perfect!

Thank you for the walk through! I’ll give that a go on my next target. I do use Noels actions, but when the halos appear I use Annie’s reduce halos action and that usually does a great job. bloomin ‘eck that’s high praise indeed. Thank you so much!

Good spot! I’m very aware of the weird shaped squiggly stars, I can’t figure out a good way of reducing the stars either before or after adding them back in to the starless layer. I did use some fairly heavy noise reduction with Topaz labs and photoshop so maybe that’s where the pixelation is happening. I’m fairly sure I uploaded the tiff to Flickr and then shared from there to here, so perhaps that has something to do with it, too? Though the original doesn’t look great either haha

No problem at all! Gain 139, temp -20. 600s exposures.

Thank you! This is the basic process as I remember it: Captured data over 5 nights in September from my back garden in a Bortle 4 zone (borderline 5). Fully calibrated and combined in SiriL, Simple stretch in Photoshop, Exported and run through StarNet++, Each channel into Photoshop for stretching, spot healing any star residue, curves, noise reduction (combination of Topaz Labs DeNoise and Astronomy Tools), smart sharpening, Combination of the HOO palette, Some changes to hue and saturation, further sharpening of the Oiii using masks, Reduced the star size separately (still haven't fully got the hang of this as you can see some really bad artefacts when zoomed in) before adding them in and reducing them further to taste, Spend hours pondering over what to do next, sleep on it, post it the next morning!

Wow, I honestly wasn't expecting this response! Thank you all so very much for your kind words. Thank you Steve, it all started with your book so I'm a little star-struck knowing you liked my image! Yes, haha I totally forgot it was there until I started post-processing, then was gutted that I didn't frame it better!

Hi everyone! Managed to capture 9hrs Ha and 11hrs Oiii (7nm) on this one. SW 80ED DS-Pro ZWO ASI1600MM Pro SW NEQ6 Pro ZWO ASIAir Pro SiriL StarNet++ Adobe Photoshop CC Thanks for looking!

Like it! I'm using the ASIAir Pro, too. It has made astrophotography so much more enjoyable purely down to the speed in which I can get going, and that I can monitor everything from my iPad. Sorry to hear about your job, it's a tough time for most people right now. Hopefully the ASIAir will bring you plenty of enjoyment away from all of that.

This is awesome, love it!

Thanks! My thinking was that a premium and narrower OIII filter would allow me to get better data, particularly as it's affected so much more by the moon? I feel like if I'm going to purchase filters as and when I can afford them, then OIII should be the first one to get as Ha looks great even with my 7nm filter, and OIII is the next most common emission type. I feel like it would make the biggest difference to my images so I should go for that one first?

Thanks for your kind words everyone, that's some nice positive reinforcement! Yes, great idea! I think I'll be looking at upgrading the Oiii filter before any of the others, too. That should help!

First SHO palette image I've done. The processing was NOT easy! I started from scratch multiple times, but I've got the hang of it now. I think a lot of it had to do with the Sii and Oiii data being quite bad. I think it's time I moved over to PI... Total integration time is roughly 5 hours in 180 second sub exposures. SW 80ED DS-Pro ZWO 7nm SHO filters ZWO ASI1600MM Pro SW NEQ6 Pro ZWO ASIAir Pro SiriL StarNet++ Adobe Photoshop CC

I love this! I'm trying to process my version of this same area but can't get it anywhere near what I'd like... especially when I look at this amazing example!

This is truly superb! Love it.

Very lovely. This has me super excited to get my own Esprit 100!

I really love this! The colour palette is just to my liking, and there’s some really interesting dark nebulosity about.

Invest the time now to get guiding sorted, you won’t regret it! Thanks! I do love my ED80, it has served me well. However, there’s now an Esprit 100 on the way...

Guiding will definitely step up your game, but you can buy light pollution filters that will really help! Besides, I’m not sure 20min exposures are all that good, there’s always a balance to be made between exposure time and amount of exposures.

Didn’t read anything wrong there! I was very fortunate to live in dark skies when that data was captured. My DSLR was modified by CentralDS to have a Peltier fan that cooled the sensor to 20 deg c below the ambient temperature. I must have also had pretty decent guiding for those sessions, too! I wouldn’t think of going to 20min exposures in my current light polluted skies and sensitive ASI1600mm chip!

Thanks! 1600mm pro. I have an Esprit 100 on the way, too. Very exciting times! Thanks very much!

Having purchased a mono cam recently, I thought it would be apt to post my last DSLR images for my first imaging post on SGL! 19x 1200s Ha 12nm ISO1600 12x 1200s OIII 12nm ISO1600 64x 600s ISO800 19x 600s Ha 12nm ISO800 48x 600s Ha 12nm ISO800 43x 600s OIII 12nm ISO800 All taken with my SW 80ED DS-Pro and Canon 60D (CentralDS). Maybe one day I'll get another DSLR, but for now I'm very excited about real mono imaging! Thanks for looking, Jamie.

Hello everyone, I've been a bit of a lurker around these parts and figured I should really start contributing! I'm living in Ely, England. I've been practicing astrophotography for about 7 years (so I should be far better than I am!). My main equipment in the past has been refractors and DSLR, but I've just upgraded to an ASI1600MM, and have an Esprit 100 on the way (Thanks FLO!). I've dabbled in solar system imaging, including solar, but my main passion is DSO. Looking forward to contributing as best I can. Jamie.