Trouble with and Elephant

[mgirdwood]

hi all. I thought i would have a shot at the Elephant Nebula last night, but i am not happy with anything i seem to be getting out of the processing.

Any suggestions are very welcome.

15 x 500 sec, ISO 800. 10 Flats

ED80, unmod 1100D

Cheers

Mark

[ianaiken]

I can make out the trunk just to the right of centre. What does it look like stacked without using flats?

[mgirdwood]

I can see where ther should be some darkness to bring out the trunk etc, but i can seem to quite getbthere. No flats just dark and bias. Perhaps I needed to up the iso to 1600.

[ianaiken]

I can see the trunk too but faintly. With that exposure time you should be able to pull something out unless you have severe light pollution.

Did you stack in DSS and did you adjust the levels before exporting the image? What was your processing as like you say it could be that you need a bit help with. What did you do?

I found this guide useful for processing https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0ByZXuV0vUfw7Nzk1ZTJmNmItOWRjZS00OGYxLWFiMzEtYzFjMzkyN2IyYjdl&hl=en_US

[Cloudwatcher]

Hunt the elephant .....isn't that frowned upon these days?

Anyhow,I rotated the image through ninety degrees,isolated the area where I thought it was hiding in the undergrowth,played with the saturation and bingo.......... found the little devil!