Finally get out again, plus a nice wide field image!

[Langy]

Well the evening started off pretty cloudy, went out for a smoke just after 8 and was amazed   just how clear it had become. Got all the gear ready in the kitchen to go out and then started setting up outside. After about 15 minutes outside a quick shower so rushed the odd bits back in the kitchen door. 5 minutes later and all clear again, strange weather!

So went back outside again and set the DSLR up on top of the scope with the 75-300 lens set at 75mm for a change. 10 second exposures with the help of the cheap MD and managed to know off around 60 lights. Which when you consider I set the timer to take a 10 second image wait 15 seconds to allow it to be saved then take the next one. 300D is not that quick with saving the RAW images, at least this way I had no buffering issues.

While the camera was snapping away I got out the new bins and my modified bracket for the tripod which I had to treat with a file to work properly on my bins.

Packed up just after 11 when the cloud rolled in and downloaded all the images, processed in DSS tweaked a little in PS to get this.

A most enjoyable night and pleased to get what I think is a nice image. The nebula is a bit blown out, would be interesting to see if anyone could tweak it a bit more to get a better image. I'm pleased with it anyway!

Don't know if the image is full quality but the original is far better, certainly no trailing stars.

[Pete Presland]

nice widefield shot. Orion looked beautiful between the clouds last night!

[Astrosurf]

Well done on the persistence! And a nice shot.  Try isolating the centre of the neb with a feathered selection tool. I reselect each time I do an iteration of gentle Curves so there's no obvious line where you make the selection. There's also a Layer Mask. This shows you how a Layer Mask is used. You can use a copy of the original before it's stretched instead of different exposures:

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/LAYMASK.HTM

Alexxx

[Langy]

Well done on the persistence! And a nice shot.  Try isolating the centre of the neb with a feathered selection tool. I reselect each time I do an iteration of gentle Curves so there's no obvious line where you make the selection. There's also a Layer Mask. This shows you how a Layer Mask is used. You can use a copy of the original before it's stretched instead of different exposures:

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/LAYMASK.HTM

Alexxx

Thanks Alex, I will have a go with this tonight. All the years I've played around with PS for photography I've done a lot of different things, but it's been a while since I've worked on anything in PS other than creating effects for textual work etc.

[Astrosurf]

Best of luck Paul. Let us know how you get on.