M33

[26Left]

Hello all,

I had a go at M33 a couple of months ago, but was not really satisifed with the result. Since then, I have bought a new camera with much lower noise. Finally, the clouds cleared on Sunday night and I had another go.

This is the result of 4.3 hours of capture, mainly 4 minute subs @ ISO 800, and then 20 darks. Taken through my 5" Meade refractor with a Nikon D7000. M33 is quite a challenge, because it has such a low surface brightness and is just about on the limit of what I can image from my back garden. NELM was about 5; perhaps a little better. Transparency was particularly good.

I think it's amazing that we can capture nebulae within another galaxy.

Cheers,

Tom.

[Nightfly]

A fine image. Congratulations!

[ollypenrice]

Yes, well done. Pretty strong signal for an object thaat can eat hours as if they were seconds!

Your sky is very black. I wonder if the black point is a little clipped?

Olly

[26Left]

Yes, well done. Pretty strong signal for an object thaat can eat hours as if they were seconds!

Your sky is very black. I wonder if the black point is a little clipped?

Olly

Hi Olly,

Thanks for your comments.

I wish my sky really was that black when I look up I live right on the south-east edge of a town, and the sky in that direction is pretty good, which is good for targets for a few hours as they approach their transit.

But, of course, what you mean is the way it's processed. What I tend to do is bring the sky down to about 15/15/15. I start off by pulling the curve down at the black end, but towards the end of the processing, I clip the black using levels. I never clip the white end.

In this pic, I can see the sky is about 13/13/13. What sort of level would you normally aim for?

Tom.