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Horse and Flame in the TEC140

ollypenrice

By ollypenrice
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

Posted
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This was a messy capture with the mount acting the goat all night. Most of the subs were trailed so I resorted to Photoshop thuggery. Under the circumstances I'm quite relieved that it's not too bad. We could only shoot 10 minute Ha subs which really is bad news. I'll get back to this target now that the TEC is temproarily (perhaps) running on Yves' Mesu. Bliss! Roll on our new EQ8!

Alnitak; usually this needs serious processing. As I stretched the luminance data I was all set for the star to sprawl half way across the picture but it never happened and throughout the stretch Alnitak remained a double, cleanly split. Look carefully and it is almost resolved as a triple with a tiny star showing to the right. In a nutshell the TEC with flattener and 11 meg camera is proving to be brilliant. This excellent control of the star means that there's Flame data which, in previous attempts on this target, has been swamped by star bloat.

More Ha will bring out the contrasts and more data generally will lower the noise. To be continued.

Olly

Horse%20HaLRGB-L.jpg

Full, but this is a WIP so pixel peeping!!! http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/22435624_WLMPTM#!i=2952563908&k=6shTXhn&lb=1&s=O

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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The horsehead itself is beautifully sharp. Any idea on why the mount was playing up?

Nope. One of those things. It's handled the TEC perfectly well for several years but at the moment it's all over the place. That really is how it goes in this game!

Olly

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Sandancer10

Sandancer10

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Hi Olly, as always your images are so inspirational and this one is a beauty.  I would be interested to learn how you get rid of star trails in PS as I can only manage 1 min subs before trails appear. I know that my Polar Alignment leaves a lot to be desired and I am trying to get that better, but in the meantime I would appreciate any advice regarding imaging.

Thanks Brenda  :smiley:

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Hi Olly, as always your images are so inspirational and this one is a beauty.  I would be interested to learn how you get rid of star trails in PS as I can only manage 1 min subs before trails appear. I know that my Polar Alignment leaves a lot to be desired and I am trying to get that better, but in the meantime I would appreciate any advice regarding imaging.

Thanks Brenda  :smiley:

Hi Brenda,

This is a fairly well known Photoshop bodge and I'm not proud of using it! Inevitably there is a loss of resolution when you do so. 

Open image.

Rotate canvas till the trails are either vertical or horizontal.

Make a copy layer, then set the blend mode darken.

Go to Filter, Other, Offset and try an offset of 1, 2 or whatever in the direction of the trailing, whether that's horizontal or vertical.

You will probably find that you want a sub pixel shift in order to get round stars and at this stage that's not possible but fear not. Choose a slightly excessive offset which over-flattens them slightly then go to Edit-Fade Offset and fade what you've just done till the stars are round. Ctrl E will flatten the layers. This is a good routine for emergencies, not a good habit!!!

Olly

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