LRGB, how am I doing?

[MattJenko]

It is still early days in the LRGB world of me, so posting this latest effort to get some feedback on where to improve. Here is the familiar Leo Trio. First issue is my framing is not perfect

Skywatcher ED80, HEQ5, Atik 414ex, 10 x 10min L, 10 x 5min RGB binned 2x2.

I am not sure that binning the colour is the best thing for me with my little chip, not really sure. It reduces overall time though. Would gathering pure RGB 1x1 be better and ignoring L completely?

[lensman57]

This looks great Matt, really well done. Judging by the amount of signal you are getting your sky must be suitable for this kind of imaging. I'd go for RGB 1:1:1 and add as much L as possible later.

Regards,

A.G

[ollypenrice]

That's a roaring success in my book.  M66 is exquisite. 

I guess binning takes you to 3.2 arcsecs per pixel which isn't horribly coarse and won't badly impact on colour resolution. However, in this kind of image I prefer not to apply luminance to stars since it just makes them bigger and burns out the core colour so I shoot unbinned and use 'RGB only' stars. These are best unbinned, of course.

More luminance would get you more of the outer glow round the galaxies and maybe some tidal tail for the NGC.

Olly

[davedownsouth]

Really great shot, I am looking forward to having my first go at the triplet soon, hopefully on Sunday night .  From reading this I will just do RGB unbinned and go for 10 x 8 minute on each.  Realistically, I probably won't get all three done in one night, so is there an order I should do these in?  I asked as if the forecast is correct, Tuesday / Wednesday will be the next night(s) I will be getting out, so there will be a bit more moon about, so are there any of the RGB colours which will be more adversely affected by the increased moon, so it would be better if I did these first on the Sunday night (hope this makes sense)?

[MattJenko]

Thanks all, more positive than I expected. It appears it is true what I have been told here that the arrival of a CCD makes one more critical and demanding of oneself. I do however keep forgetting the advice to not bother with Lum for stars. It's not like I haven't read that many times now. Guess I am at an age where things need to be drummed into me

So if I were to do this again, I would go for less blocky RGB, so shoot unbinned and get that all in first. It did feel a bit chunky when processing it. This could be done with shorter exposure times though, to both get less saturated star cores and to keep overall time down. Then go to town on Lum.

As for the ordering question - I know that Blue is best done high in the sky, although I imagine all get affected by the Moon. I am still determined to get R,G,B,R,G,B... working for me, so I can at least work on something after a session, as the weather is playing dirty at the moment (clouded out the eclipse here and then gave me blazing sunshine in the afternoon!) and then add more data as and when the clouds permit. I have a couple of targets now with missing channels, and it is rather frustrating to say the least.

Matt

[knobby]

Very nice Matt, just looked at it on your Astrobin site, looks much nicer there !

well done

[MattJenko]

Thanks Knobby. I saw toxic's excellent Trio : http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/239520-leo-triplet/  and thought I should have another go at processing mine, so did a more attentive job with the detailing.