M45 processing help

[Jannis]

Ok, so, Finally after hours of setting up teh stuff for the first time this season, i got things up and running, kind of... mmh, anyway...

Only tried M45 once before, with a single sub where i even bumped teh scope (actually, the cat jumped on it, but noone belives me when i say that anyway, lol), and it ended up like this: http://jannis.no-ip.info/astro/full/IMG_1945.jpg

so after throwing away 2/3 pics of m45 due to strong tracking errors, i was left with 7x 300 sec exposures at ISO 800.

Not as much as i wanted, but thought i'd give it a quick try as it will be clouded for over a week now anyway.

But i soon realised that my processing skills had somehow frozen solid and remained somewhere in the snow at my previous home, and wasn't going to help me much on this seasons first pic.

What i managed to get, was in my eyes even close to pretty, so here i'm asking for a little help in getting the colour and detailt out of it. asuming it's possible...

attached is the JPG i managed to get after DSS and a quick round in photoshop with only levels adjusted.

And here is a ling to the low res TIF: http://jannis.no-ip.info/astro/workinprogress/M45.15-11-2011.tif (9MB)

only light frames stacked, no flats or darks, and the moon was up rather close to M45 also, not really ideal, but oh well.

So, does anyone have any tips on the next step to make? Haven't tried to do any curve adjustments on this one as it looked too messy, but i'll try a little more later and see what i can get with a little more small and careful steps at a time.

[Jessun]

Hello fellow Scandie!

I'll leave the editing question for the Jedis on this forum - to me it looks really nice, I can imagine the cold Norwegian air up there!

I wonder though why you had to throw away such an aweful lot of subs? The image is well focused and guiding seems just fine... what happened with the subs? Could you try shorter subs to keep more data? That's what I'd address first to be honest.

ha de! (have a good one)

/Jessun

[Jannis]

Hehe, well, several reasons actually.

A coupple of times to begin with the HEQ5 just simply refused to track (luckily only 2 pics in teh beginning, might have been me messing up something. i hope so at least, as teh HEQ5 is only 1 year old, lol), and the other times i have odd tracking issues (thought it could be vibrations due to lack of mirror lockup for this nights attempt, but it didn't look liek it after a closer look). Could be due to ice covering the scope and stuff, and i had temporary only taped on the guide cam.

here's an example of each.

mmh, and just a pic i took to check if the dew shield stood up after 5 hours outside.. the dew shield was pitch black before i took the scope out... So yeah, nice and cold, and actually a bit foggy that night

[Jessun]

What sort of temperature have you got now then? I have nothing with moving mirrors but sure, you do have a distinct jump in the pic....

Ah, well plenty of people here who know what you're dealing with and I'm sure they'll pass a clue or two! Nice result still tho IMHO

/Jessun

[Jannis]

Not too cold right now. It was around -6c when i took these. But the fog made it get completly coverd in ice everywhere...

I suspected the mirror making the mount shake too, but when i took a closer look, it didn't look like it. After all, a simple shake from the SLR mirror the first 2 sec of a 300 sec exposure wouldn't make the final pic look like that. Seems more like the ice made the guide cam move slightly very suddenly, making it "correct" movements that was never there. But i didn't expect good guiding in this run anyway, so it's all good. But next time, i hope i'll have it set up perfect...

[ollypenrice]

Right, first you need flats!!! You have little or no hope of separating the nebulosity from the uneven illumination (vignetting) without them. PixInsight has a Dynamic Background Extraction routine which might help but the same problem will apply. What is nebulosity and what is uneven illumination.

Flats! You will stay behind after school if you fail to take them next time!

Olly

[Jannis]

Thanks olly!

i normally take and use flats to fight against vignetting, but sort of forgot the part you mentiond that it's also nerly impossible to drag out the details without it... ^^;

Will give it a try with flats and darks next time and see how it works.

At least it's still an improvement from last years single sub, haha xD

Want to give this one a try with mosaic this season if i can get it good. Wanted M42 in teh first place, but realiced it will still be over a month untill i can try it as it's almost constantly behind the trees accross teh street for now...