First attempt

[TFC]

Thought I'd start with an easy one - this is supposed to be Cassiopeia!

Tracking only with the HEQ5.

15 x 30sec lights at 50mm, f4 and ISO 400

22 x Darks

45 Bias (lost count)

DSS and and rummaged about in PS4 for a while.

Not bad for an Olympus - at least the stars are round

Any critisisms or advice gratefully received

Tony

[spaceboy]

Looks OK to me apart from ideally you could do with flipping the image.

EDIT: Hang on my bad! I do apologize you are correct! Was thinking the 2 bright patches were the double cluster DOH!!!

GREAT IMAGE JUST THE WAY IT IS!!!

SPACEBOY

[SteveL]

From astrometry.net:

[rfdesigner]

Good start..

but I think you need to have a look at the image processing.

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-tips-tricks-techniques/82134-simple-removal-gradients-vignetting.html

and the other 'sticky' pages in that section.

Basically you've over darkened the image a bit, so you've lost faint data. (you can tell by looking at the histogram). You may also want to look at calibrating your monitor, you can google for it, but I use:

LCD monitor test images

Derek

[spaceboy]

Is that HIP 2920 then ?

[TFC]

From astrometry.net:

Thanks Steve - very useful

Tony

[Coco]

Onwards and upwards Tony, it get expensive from here on

[TFC]

Good start..

but I think you need to have a look at the image processing.

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-tips-tricks-techniques/82134-simple-removal-gradients-vignetting.html

and the other 'sticky' pages in that section.

Basically you've over darkened the image a bit, so you've lost faint data. (you can tell by looking at the histogram). You may also want to look at calibrating your monitor, you can google for it, but I use:

LCD monitor test images

Derek

Thanks Derek - I'll have a look at those.

I guess it's familiarity that allows you to detect vignetting in the image.

I tried correcting the gradient, but didn't like how it looked. Maybe there's a better way - I guess making a mask?

I darkened the image because my objective was to make Cassiopeia stand out as much as possible rather than to show all the captured very feint stars - there are a lot more stars in the image, but the background became a bit too light

Cheers,

Tony

[rfdesigner]

If you use IRIS the command SBLUR will allow you to pull out bright stars from the background without clipping the dim stars to black.

see

New features of version 4.14

Derek