Whirlpool From Bryce Canyon / Alcon

[JoLo]

Greetings fellow Loungers:

I was at ALCON in Bryce Canyon Utah at the end of June, and had my first opportunity to do some DSOs. I am pretty happy with the results of my first attempt, but need everyone's objective criticisms......the details:

The Whirlpool was 12 - 5 min subs through my AT106 on the Atlas....Canon Rebel 450 (XSI), ISO 800. I used 7 darks for calibration, no flats or bias frames. The images were stacked in Maxim DL; I used GradientXterminator and Noise Ninja on the stacked .tiff, then curves/color balance and sharpening in Photoshop.

The Milky Way shot was taken a few nights before at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Single, 20 second exposure with the Canon on the tripod, GradientX and Noise Ninja again used, final processing in Photoshop.

Again, for a first attempt I am very happy with the results, but value the expertise of my fellow loungers. I have some M31 subs I am working on, as well as Lagoon / Trifid through the AT65...will post when I finish.

Thanking you in advance......

Joe

[Adz]

Really fantastic Milky Way shot Joe, well done

What ISO were you using? It must have been stunning skies.

[JoLo]

800....yes, the skies at Chaco and Bryce were ubelievable. Even at Chaco, there was a light dome from Albuquerque, 80 miles to the south......

[JoLo]

It was really a beautiful night at Chaco Canyon...sparse, high clouds were rolling through until about 11:30 when they cleared completely. I got some really nice shots of the Milky Way and clouds overlaid, am working on a four panel mosaic stretching from wall to wall in the canyon, will post when complete. Here is a single 25 second shot looking south toward Scorpio: unmodded Canon Rebel XSi, Sigma 20 mm, ISO 800 at f/2.2.

[Adz]

I can't wait for the mosiac, and the amount of stars you get for 25 secs at f2.2 ISO 800 is fantastic!

[callisto]

Nice images Joe

[RobH]

Chaco canyon looks amazing Joe.

Great milky way shots.

M51 has a bit more to give I think. You look to have clipped the black a little and possibly lost some depth....try setting the blackpoint at 20 or 30 through your processing, and only take it lower (if you need to) right at the end.

I rarely end up with a blackpoint darker that 10 on each channel.

Cheers

Rob

[JoLo]

Thanks Rob. I have struggled a bit with setting the black point, and keeping it up near 20 or 30. When I stretch to "pull" the histogram off the left side, it often breaks up and shows the gaps...I guess this is a consequence of not enough data? Then when i reset the black point, it often looks washed out and brownish, or very noisy.

I have read to reset the black point after each stretch...is that right?

Also, I hear some folks like a bit more blue in the background, and shoot for 20-20-30 or something like that.....true?

I will revisit my M51 data and see if I can improve it....getting the background looking right has been one of the more difficult challenges for me.

Thanks for your help Rob.

[Cloudwatcher]

I like single shot images as it is always fun to see what can be pulled out vis-a-vis a stack.

Hope you don't mind but I just did a quick tea break tweak of the first Milky Way image using Preview (not the most sophisticated tool) and came up with this.

Of course I have no idea what the skies above Chaco Canyon look like so it may appear totally wrong but it does show a bit more detail I think.

[JoLo]

It certainly does CW, thank you. Did you do further stretches on the image? I guess I reset the blackpoint at too low a value? As i said above, I struggle a bit with getting that right. I am going to redo my M51 above this weekend, see if I can get that background up a bit and more detail out, as Rob suggests.

Thanks again CloudWatcher...tweak away, I am new to this and appreciate any and all suggestions for improvement.

Joe

[PH-R]

Hi

Really great images! If you look at the picture of M51 at around 7 o'clock it looks like there are two more galaxies?

Best wishes,

Paul