am i likely to get / see any more?

[garethmob]

hello guys

took this the other night it was 2 mins long with 9 subs (battery ran out on 10th ) am i likely to get anything else out of doing more subs or longer exposure (will i see anything apart from the plough)

[nmoushon]

Is this a stack of the 9 subs or a single sub? Also is that 9 subs at 2min each or 9 subs totaling 2min? Adding darks will help so don't forget to add those. But either way more subs will help most definitely. What f-stop where you at?

[garethmob]

Hello It's 9 subs stacked with 20 darks 2 mins each sub(even each dark) Iv aligned everything in dss ignoring the flats issue and the optical issue. Iv just seen lots of images of areas of the sky with long exposures of pics and it just dosent seem much for what I'm getting compared to them. I can stick the stacked file on here but it will take a few hours as I'm using my phones Internet on my laptop. Would it be better on a different part of the sky?

Edit: sorry forgot f stop. It was 5.4. Lower gives bad star shapes

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[Ags]

I see you have a mojor problem with a gradient - and this is unavoidable with a wide lens and light-polluted skies. If you double the focal length you are using, you will halve the size of the gradient (simply because you will be imaging a smaller section of the sky) and a LP filter will also bring the gradient down.

You can use software like IRIS (free) to remove the gradient as well.

[garethmob]

Ahhh I see. So the 58mm is better so should I only use the 24 where it's near darkness?

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[nmoushon]

Your not doing anything wrong. The LP in your area could be one thing that is preventing your skies from being more black than gray. A LP filter is really the only way around this without traveling someone where darker. The other thing that plays into why your not seeing what other widefield shots at the same exposure time you have or less is they are shooting at f/2.8ish. So they have a much bigger advantage over your shots because of that. I don't know how to do the math to figure out how much exposure time at f/5.4 is needed to equal say a 5min exposure at f/2.8 but its going to be a good chunk more. Oh and they are most likely shot at dark sites too.

Not sure how experienced you are at processing but I think you could get a bit more out of it if your LP isn't that bad. If your LP is bad then you might be sol.

[garethmob]

My ability of processing is bad iv got the s@n guides tho so might give it a go tonight thanks guys for the help the lp issue is because I'm now living in Newport gwent do the city lights take away everything from me I use to live a few months ago in darker sky's I miss them

Thanks agin guys

Gaz

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[nmoushon]

I understand you there. I live in the suburbs on Chicago so I have to drive 45min just to take pictures period. If you like load up a TIFF of your stacked subs when you get home and I'll have a play with it tonight and see what I can pull out.

[garethmob]

here we go, i put it in the public folder of my dropbox

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32389220/3rd%20the%20plough.TIF

thanks nmoushon:)

[nmoushon]

My pc got the blue screen of death today Guess its time for an upgrade. So had to use my gf's laptop so missing out on a couple plug-ins. So I just tweaked the levels and curves and used a couple filters in PS. But it at least shows you you still have plenty of data left in there. I'm not good with gradient removal but that would help a lot as well flats. Your lense/camera might need a bit of cleaning also. Looks like you might have a couple dust bunnies in there So I'm thinking you have a pretty bad light source which is causing most the gradient issues in that bottom corner. But still a good shot.