First image with new frac M13

[Looking Up]

This is my first image with a frac, just used camera lenses before, not too sure if it has had enough time in it as it looks a bit lacking in photons! And it looks a bit fuzzy, not sure if the flattener is working well some stars at the edge of the image seem to trail from the centre, I will try it without tonight if its clear.

The crop shows the centre, it seems to have some detail but not as many stars as some images I've seen. 7 x 400sec, 4 x darks, iso 400, 40D with cls filter.

I haven't investigated flats,bias frames etc yet as I want to learn how to walk first! What can I do to improve things?

[ollypenrice]

I think you need longer subs. What you have here looks small for 900mm because, I think, you only have the core showing. Longer subs will allow it to 'grow' as you catch the faint outer stars.

Olly

[Dave Smith]

I was a bit puzzled at the lack of stars in your image as I have just this week imaged M13 also with a 40D and CLS filter at iso 400 but with only 300s subs. See http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/145109-m13-great-hercules-cluster.html

So I have had a quick play in photoshop with your jpg to find that there is in fact much more information that it first appeared. All I did was lift the level in curves and darken the background. Edit: The backgound isn't correct but you can see that there are many more stars in there.

Dave

[Looking Up]

I think your both right, I think i need more time as you say Oli and I need to push the brightness more Dave. Thanks

[Looking Up]

Pushed the levels a bit more

[rich_t]

Wow, that made a difference, lots great!

Rich.

[johnh]

Wow that stretch in your reprocess has really brought out M13, just need more subs to smooth it out now. Looking good.

John.

[Dave Smith]

That is a fantastic improvement, brilliant.

Dave.

[mike_777]

like it!

[ollypenrice]

Yes! Nice one. Now the brightening seems to have burned out the colour so maybe if you first used Colour Select to select the background sky, then Select Inverse, you could boost the saturation of the stars without raising the noise in the background sky.

Coming along really well.

Olly

[Looking Up]

Here's a bit more colour, but I think it's gone darker again, I've been trying to use Pixinsight, can't seem to get the balance right! So this is PS Elements again. I find processing very difficult, I'm always convincing myself that it looks better and then taking a second peek at it realizing it looks ****! Still I like to tell myself that those photons have travelled billions of miles just for my camera to capture and for me to look at.....fab!

[fwm891]

One thing you can do in PS is create a duplicate layer, switch off the original layer and work on the copy. When you think you have improved things just switch visibility between the worked and original layers...

Better still save your original as something else, reopen the original and leave it visible next to the resaved copy while you work...

I like using adjustment layers so the base image remains unchanged.

Francis

[Daniel-K]

is that ngc6205 at the bottom??