Horsehead, need help processing

[malc-c]

Guys,

Like most of you I've taken advantage of the first clear night for ages to do some observing and work on my scope. Even though wind was gusting to 23mph and with the protection of the observatory PHD was struggling to keep things on track, but as I was really only interested to see if the belt mod I had done earlier made much difference, wasn't that bothered at what I captured.

So I took three 400 second images of Alnitak and just for a laugh stacked them in DSS, and was pleased to see that the Horsehead could be faintly made out. I've not taken any darks etc as I wasn't really imaging, but wondered if anyone with better processing skills than I can do something with the three raw files.

The files can be downloaded from http://micro-heli.co.uk/Horsehead.rar - the files have been compressed into a RAR file of 35MB

Cheers

[BlueAstra]

Had a quick play with the image in PS. Lots of noise there, obviously need more time on the target.

[malc-c]

Thanks, nice work considering it was just three subs - cheers

[Quatermass]

I put together a set of 13 photoshop processing tutorials on my blog that might be of use to you for processing the horse head and other images.

Star Gazing

[Quatermass]

Yes had a go at it but far too much noise and not really a workable image more time spent on the target with a say 60 good subs of variable exposures with 30 darks lights and bias offsets would give you much better results. You can draw out detail from this lot but the noise is way too much to clear up nicely. Hope we get some more clear skies for you soon

[malc-c]

Thanks guys... I'm looking on this as a dummy run, and at least I know where to place the main star in the FOV. Lets hope we get some decent clear skies with little or no wind and I can then get some decent data.

I'm off to read up on those tutorials QM has made...