First ever DSO Image : M51 Galaxy Pair (200P w/Canon 1100D, Gimp and Registax)

[coxy322]

Evening all!

Am excited to share with you my first real attempt at processing a DSO image that I took on Sunday night.

This is a mixture of just two images, one tripled and adjusted in GIMP before being merged, along with some masking for the galaxy and over-exposing/under-exposing before re-stacking. Then stacked with other images taken that night (one dark and one 45 second exposure) and then tweaked further on wavelets.

Spent so much longer learning the software and tweaking the images - two evenings worth!

Does anybody recommended any blogs on DSO AP, flats and darks, image processing dos and donts?!

[astrogaz]

well done.. I remember my first object I ever imaged,,,,welcome to the dark side

[coxy322]

Care to share what it was Astrogaz?