First Ha images with my 350Da

[astrovirus]

So, last week, I shot my first Ha images with a Baader 7 nm Ha flter and my trusty Canon 350Da. i have to say, I'm impressed on what shows up after processing. First image was the first light on M57 and consists of 3 hours 40 min (10 min subs), 18 darks, 30 flats and 30 flat-darks. Second image is NGC6888, and this was exposed for 6 hrs 20 min (ISO 800, 20 min subs), 12 darks, 30 flats and 30 flatdarks. i also made an attempt to combinethis with and RGB image from 2 years ago, but I am still struggling on this. Final image is a work in progress (as is M57 for identical reasons) as want to capture the faint outer halo which are already showing for both but need much more exposure time. This image exposure is 3 hrs 20 min (10x20 min), ISO 800, 12 darks, 30 flats and 30 flatdarks. All images shot with the Canon 350Da on an 8"/@F5 Newt/NEQ6, guided with a 9x50/QHY5 finderguider. Comments are welcome, and thanks for looking.

[Mark72]

Nice images, Crescent looks great; on the color side you may need to take care of green stars.

Mark

[astrovirus]

Thanks Mark, I'll keep working on the HaRGB blend to get it right. I have found some more tutorials and have a very nice example from a fellow Ducth astrophotographer, who has processed the same data as I used, so I know it can be done. Problem for me though, is that I am quite severely color blind in both the red and green spectrum, making it hard for me to see color disbalances. Up till now, i have used the histogram, but although I see what color is off, I have a hard time correcting it. Ah well, just another learning curve to be taken.

[Beardy Bob]

Keep on it. Nice work.

[Gina]

Great effort

[astrovirus]

So, I reprocessed the Ha image as I discovered that by using the grey scale conversion of the RGB stack had resulted in smaller stars than using the red channel only, although there is still quite a lot of Ha signal ending up in the Green channel (see figure for example). In the end this resulted in slightly larger stars, and I also was able to gain some extra detail compared to my previous process, but left out the SMI method as it didn't that much. Finally, I was also able to do a good attempt on combining this new Ha with my old RGB image. Turned out I had to reset the right side of levels of the red channel after subsistuting it for a HaR hybrid. I monitored this by looking at 4 stars and making sure that they kept as close as possible to their star color form the Original RGB image. This worked fine as far as I, as R and G color blind can Judge. Hope you agree with my and like the new results as much as I.

[Gina]

Coming on very nicely - nice sharp images

[sulaco]

That's it!... you've inspired me to just get an 400d and mod it, they're great images

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great images. That second image of the Ring shows its outer halo as well. Impressive!

[astrovirus]

Thanks for the nice comments, Regards Tim