had enough m51 fighting a losing battle

[Daniel-K]

had enough of m51 now nothing is going right , all subs was taken when the moon was @ 50% or more and the conditions were 6/10. i just cant get rid of the noise, heres a link to some tiffs if any one wants ago https://www.dropbox....ubc5/7rSjBur8XS

details:

5.5 hours

300 sec subs and some 180 secsubs

ISO800

canon450 unmodded

darks and dodgy flats

stacked in DSS

Processed in CS6

dan

[Mark72]

Dan,

Nothing particular wrong about the image. Just a bit work on gradient and noise reduction

http://www.astrobin....33654/?mod=none

Mark

[Daniel-K]

thats a vast improvement but does my focus look off? or is that cause its x2 drizzle ?? what processing software was that with mark?

[Mark72]

Dan,

Focus may be just a bit off. Do you use Bahtinov mask?

It's PI and PS

Mark

[Chris]

Dan don't be so hard on yourself I thought the first process looked really good for the image scale which is bound to exagorate things if the focus is slightly out, also the seeing was bad and the Moon was out so its a very good image considering! Marks reprocess seems to have sharpened things up a bit, it looks great!

Don't make me show you my complete failure I had on M51 last week where my secondary dewed up after 7 minutes of data then I realised that my spare non modded 350D which I was using has more hot pixels than you can shake a stick at!

[billhinge]

Since you posted your tiffs I hope you don't mind me having a play, I'm not an expert but I had a quick diddle in Pixinsight using dynamic background extraction, histogram and noise reduction

[Gina]

WOW! Great stuff - that image certainly scrubbed up really well

[nightvision]

Since you posted your tiffs I hope you don't mind me having a play, I'm not an expert but I had a quick diddle in Pixinsight using dynamic background extraction, histogram and noise reduction

Wow! you extracted some depth with that extra processing! I like the deep galaxy top left.

[billhinge]

Ta, but credit to Dan, he put the effort in taking the 7hr image

[nightvision]

Ta, but credit to Dan, he put the effort in taking the 7hr image

Yeah exactly, nice one Dan, I have to say I am not too bothered about image quality (just too costly and challenging in this country) but depth like that really spikes the imagination.

[Daniel-K]

I have high expectations from my kit, from the stack it looks like I have field rotation so it looks like im going to have to PA the mount on the pier

Its not been done since October and I have knocked it a few times in the dark, I would have thought 7 hours would have better SNR Than this. Not using a mask just FWHM in BYE I might restack withiut the x2 drizzle maybe take bias frames see if that helps

[nightvision]

I have high expectations from my kit........

Me too but I think billions of stars 31 million light years away is pretty good and it looks like the background galaxy is twice as far away! Have you thought about cooling the 450? I am trying to work up the courage to butcher my 1000D for some sensor cooling.

[Austin]

Dan, Awesome pic, and done from the outskirts of a MAJOR CITY!! enough said

[Cloudwatcher]

Here's my over-sharp,high contrast,saturated view.

Dosen't do a lot for the overall picture perhaps but I think it does begin to show what a lot of detail you captured in M51 itself.

[Chris]

Wow thats brought out the detail like you say, well done Cloudwatcher:) Layer this version with the background from the previous then I think its a winner!

[Gina]

That's lovely

[Daniel-K]

That looks a bit better, the colour is way better. Looking like I need to lern more techniques

[nytecam]

Dan - you were [initially] too hard on yourself - a fine image in there with some tweaks - down to mag 18 - as I'd expect for 5hrs+ exp

[ollypenrice]

The picture is in there somewhere! Mark's was good. Cloudwatcher got the colour right, Billhinge got a flatter background (use SCNR Green on it as well in Pixinsight, BTW.)

Shooting braodband in moonlight is doomed to partial success at best. You just will get noise and there's nothing you can do about it.

I think you've done well.

Olly

[peter shah]

moon light will always make this a challenge, you have still super shot there, its easy to forget how difficult this imaging game is with so many things to think about. I don't think you have lost any battle

[Pete Presland]

moon light will always make this a challenge, you have still super shot there, its easy to forget how difficult this imaging game is with so many things to think about. I don't think you have lost any battle

spot on! so many great images around on here, i think it lull's us mortals into thinking its easy.

[Pete Presland]

the image looks pretty good in my humble opinion, i am guessing the over saturated version shows the limits of what maybe you going to be able to pull out of it.

[Daniel-K]

thanks all for the advice, i need to learn more on processing i think and next time maybe image at iso 400 wen the moon is up. ah well not all is lost at least i came out with an image.may try again on a moonless night.

[earth titan]

Stick with it Danny - I thought it looked pretty good. The processing is an area I'm still learning - particularly when trying to reduce the noise levels.

[cardconvict]

i agree you should still stick with it, to be honest i think galaxy's are always harder to process in my opinion maybe that might just be me. i spent days trying to process m31 but finally got there.

but my very first image was m51 as you can see not very good at all