Bodes @ SGLX (130pds + 80ED)

[Uranium235]

This was my main target at SGLX, as it was high up and therefore less prone to the dodgy seeing that sometimes blew through. Also had a bit of a schoolboy error on the second night where I left the b-mask on for 40 minutes! (doh!).

However, I seem to have scraped together just enough DSLR subs to make a decent fist of the colour. The lum was fairly good, the dark skies of lucksall gave me the added bonus of a whiff of IFN - still a bit of devil to process that, and control the stars.... think I got it licked though

Bodes Nebulae

28x600 L  - 130pds/383L+

20x600 RGB - 80ED/1000d

Thanks for looking!

Lum

 

Colour

[Gina]

Absolutely superb   Very sharp with good depth and colour

[Uranium235]

Thanks Gina, the 1000d has surprised me this time. The star colour could be better, but the galaxies have come out quite well.

[paraletic mirror]

Amazing you and that 130pds were made for each other, showing what can be achieved , who needs aperture lol

Atb para

[Uranium235]

Cheers    I think the dark sky helped with this one, but if its clear tonight I might have a go at topping it up from home.... but I cant see the data being better than what I took at SGLX.

[AndyUK]

Very nice indeed, Rob - This looked nice coming in... and even better here .   You've got a fair bit of IFN showing too... (and I never realised how close NGC3077 was to these 2 before - I'll have to watch out for that if I ever get around to taking an image again!)

[Robp]

Very nice Rob as always. Looks like you had some clear nights at SGLX

I can't wait until I get my rig portable so I can get away from the light pollution I have.

[philj]

Spot on that Rob, nice to see the finished artical.

[Steve-O]

That looks excellent! I need to have a go at this imaging stuff

[Scott]

Another belter mate. As you pointed out, The dslr has done a nice job of collecting colour and your usual efforts with processing have brought the best out. very nice indeedy

[Uranium235]

Cheers Scott, I used some of the techniques from the processing session for this one - especially star control. One new thing I tried is something Rik showed me, which was "brush-in" sharpening. Its great for galaxies since they are the only objects that need it within the image (the rest is left untouched).

I also found that if you brush-in contrast too, it avoids the dark patches you can sometimes get around galaxies when running a contrast enhancement action.

One more trick for the box

[PhotoGav]

Looking good Rob. Congratulations on actually completing an image at a Star Party. In my limited experience that is quite some achievement. I won't go into details about my failed attempts at SGLX thanks to some right old schoolboy errors in setting up, doh! Suffice to say I was cursing all the way home after a fabulous sky on the Sunday night that I failed to capitalise on. Much learning has taken place though.

I would be interested to see this image posted as a .png. I think the JPEG is not doing the image justice. I can see quite a lot of artefacts in there that make the background look blotchy, which I'm sure it's not!

[Uranium235]

Cheers mate

I included the mono image to compare the background levels, most of the fuzziness in the mono image is IFN - im pretty sure it is becuase I checked it against other images and some of the odd shapes and patches match - but some of it is gradient related . However, the colour blotch is down to the DSLR - its not as bad as it was to start out with, but chromatic noise is always the achilles heel of DSLRs. Still, it got me just enough colour to finish it off in one go - and not be faffing around with Red, Green and Cloud filters

I did also hammer the lum slightly to get it (you have to!), a few more hours data might make it an easier task, so hopefully over Easter we will get some clear stuff and I can work on it a bit more. Suppose I should have started this earlier really.... fashionably late to the party again.. (as usual!)...lol.

[PhotoGav]

Don't get me wrong, it's a belter of an image. The detail in M82 is beautifully sharp. It doesn't look over squeezed at all, quite the opposite, it is delicately teased! I just always wonder about the efficiency of a jpeg on here and much prefer the quality of a png file. As for more data... Yup, has anyone ever actually reached the point of no returns with added data?!

Fingers crossed for some properly clear skies over the coming months, despite astro-imaging-time coming to an end this Sunday. We now move into the season of a grabbed hour in the middle of the night, none of this tea time pitch blackness :-(

[Uranium235]

Indeed, the clocks go forward this weekend so its going to be smash & grabs for the next few months... fortunately that is something the 130 is good at

Tonight I might look at taking some proper CLS flats, as ive been blagging it with Ha flats for the last three months - plus I collimated before SGLX, but didnt take new flats (naughty!).

[RikM]

Smashing final image Rob