M51,M81,M57,M27

[tich]

Over the last couple of weeks I've been going to a dark site & having a go at some unguided imaging as I still haven't managed to get my setup guiding yet & I'm thinking of buying some sort of stand alone guider so I don't have to rely on a laptop.

Anyway M51 & M81 were imaged in less than ideal conditions due to a near full moon so I was pleasantly surprised with the detail I did manage to get. However I have been having issues with gradients so my first attempts at processing these were pretty poor to say the least & I nearly deleted the data for M81 as it was just hopeless. I'm glad I didn't though as I installed Gradient Xterminator into Photoshop & it completely transformed the images, ok so they still aren't the best out there but I'm quite happy with them with the limited amount of data I managed to get. I just wish I'd installed it ages ago as I've been struggling for ages processing DSO's & I'm not very good with Photoshop.

All images were taken using a 200P & unmodified Canon 1000D with 90 second unguided subs, I can't wait to try out my modified DSLR next imaging session. ;-)

I had some issues with DSS stacking the Ring Nebula so I restacked the data a 4th time on another laptop on its default settings & it seemed to work ok.

This is about the 4th time I've reprocessed these the next time will be when I grab some data using the modded DSLR.

[Nicho]

Very nice images well done

[farunj]

Dumbbell looks awesome!

[Stephen Green]

Very nice images

Stephen

[Gina]

Nice ones

[tich]

Thanks, I think more data & darker skies would have helped with the first two but I guess they didn't turn out to bad. I still need to improve my photoshop skills too. I've watched many online tutorials but they just goes right over my head.