One shot colour camera check

[AstroAndy]

Here is an older image, which was done only with DSS, and one fr. a few days ago (this one is only half processed, since I ran out of time..as I was @ this 'til morning and had to go to work, lol. The first one (11x3m)may be a little color weak, I sent this thru IRIS for gradient removal, the second one is not fully processed, it's a few 10m (or 1 20m one, don't remember which), and I didn't seem to get the color right.

[AstroAndy]

I'll try your method one one some of my longer exposures, see what I come up with.

[AstroAndy]

This is what I came up with, a 10min exposure of M51, calibrated and color converted, and a 5min one of M57.

[Johnboy]

It shows what you can get with a single exposure. May I ask what scope/mount you are using, please Andy. I know my set up isn't anywhere near correct yet (fork mounted/no wedge) so short exposures are all I can do at the moment.

[AstroAndy]

Hi John

Aye, I had a good run that night (wish I'd had more 10m darks, pic. isn't fully processed, preprocessed describes it best). I have aSkywatcher 200P (8", 200mm) Newtonian reflector sitting on an EQ5 equatorial motorized mount. My cameras are a QHY5 for guiding (through the finderscope, so no extra weight|), and a Mammut Brightstar which I use @ prime focus. Living @ the edge of my town, I have to deal w/ medium light pollution. I also have a Pentax KX, w/ which I can conceivably go up to 10m (no cooling), 20 - 30 secs. is my usual length with that one, still produces pretty ghood pix, see below M45.

[Johnboy]

Hi Andy,

I downloaded a trial version of 'AstroArt' which has given me a modicum of success. Using the 'preprocessing' section I loaded in about 60 x 20 second images of M1 which I took earlier in the year. (No darks, flats etc. yet.) I chose the 'Median' setting (leaving everything else at default). This gave me a nicely stacked correctly coloured image! I couldn't believe my eyes. Using the histogram to stretch I got quite a nice picture. My wife took a look and asked if that was one of my images (she knows how deflated I have been and was truly amazed at the picture. She even told me to buy AstroArt but at £129 it's is quite expensive). Unfortunately the demo version wont let me do a save so I can't post it here for you. Strangely though I tried doing the same to the M82 image you have seen and that is completely wrong. (Very washed out in the middle). Anyway I'll do some more playing about now and maybe I'll buy a copy if things keep improving.

Cheers,

John

[AstroAndy]

Cool beans...do you have Deep Sky Stacker (free), what other s/w (software do you have)..I finally got a handle on NWS, but it doesn't stack too good. I'm slowly and laboriously managing to bring DSS and NWS together, what I didn't realize was that when an exposure shows up in green in DSS (DPP / RAW setting CMYG 02), it is not necessarily wrong, it just has to be saved as fts, re"fitted" )with ImageJ, then loaded up into NWS, and one can do the color conversion there..I stacked 5 groups ) diff. exposure lengths, diff. days, etc.), where the object was in different positions, and it stacked aces.