Blackballed

[Imd]

Hi All,

I wonder if you can take a look at an image for me. I am not proud of it. I was looking forward to getting out, and despite the moon rising and the fierce light pollution in my back garden, I thought I would give it ago. Anyway enough excuses 

I think I took 3x2min photos and 2 darks of the cocoon nebula and stacked them in DSS. I used an SW ST102. I tried longer exposures but DSS could not find any stars as the image was just white washed (I hope to get a CLS clip filter soon).

I notice a black ball in the image

Do you think  the black ball natural or  have I got a ball of dust somewhere in the system?

Thanks for looking

Ian

[Stephen]

Looks like a classic dust bunny to me Flats will remove this

[Jonny99]

First of all really good shot

Think on first analysis it seems like it could be dust but not sure

[poogle]

I'd say thats earth dust and not space dust It's too dark compared to the rest of the image.

If you didn't grab any flats you could easily remove it in photoshop.

I'm impressd you got the cocoon with an unmodded dslr under those conditions, well done!

/Patrik

[Imd]

I can't take much credit, the camera was modified. I didn't disable Magic Lantern and so the colour correction was probably still enabled. I was in a bit of a rush as I was watching the moon rising ever higher

I turn of ML next time and hopefully I will get some colour. I hope to try another object and then another scope to see if I get the same bunny but all this cloud need to move on first . I will try a flat too but I expect that may bring me to new post because my flats can have some unpredictable affects when stacking.

Thanks all

Ian

[ollypenrice]

It certainly isn't in space but since the blob is very dark with a hard edge I'd expect to find the cause fairly near the chip. We can see stars in it so it isn't right on the chip, which is good.

Quick Ps fix would be to set the clone stamp to Lighten and take a bit of blank background sky to stamp over the blob. Blend mode Lighten will only work on dark pixels. It won't affect the stars.

Olly

[Imd]

Do you think I should blow into my camera of something to dislodge the dust?

[hobsey]

Do you think I should blow into my camera of something to dislodge the dust?

I have always been told never to blow on to the sensor.

Purchase a proper blower.