Quick and dirty Pleiades Image

[Eri]

Hi guys, its almost midnight and I've just finished packing away the scope (stupid clouds) and made a quick and dirty 4 stack image of the Pleiades using deepSkyStacker and Photoshop to adjust the levels slightly. 

I'd be interested in your opinions i think its still a bit too light but to be honest I'm rather pleased with the result as I only spent 10mins on the post processing, each exposure is 30secs long and I'll be processing the pics I took of Capella probably tomorrow and also re-visit the Pleiades images 

[Manny R]

The levels could come down a bit as it's a bit bright like you say but nice image, looks like you've caught some of the nebulosity too.

[cjdawson]

I see nebulosity in that image.  I'm hoping to that we get some good nights this winter.  I'm looking forward to letting my setup loose on this target

[xtreemchaos]

good result, a bit bright,but im sure you could bring it down a bit, you stars look great. well done. thanks for sharing  charl.

[Asmodi]

I had a little play with your image, hope you don't mind.

Is this more what you are after?

[cfpendock]

Pretty good for only 30 second exposures.  Of course for only 2 minutes total it's noisy, but most noticeable is the vignetting.  Flats would make a huge improvement.....

Chris

[Eri]

Thats great Asmodi, I don't mind at all, I need to understand flats next I'm currently playing with the full 30 sets of images I took for the Pleiades as I had more time to play tonight that I did at midnight last night. once i've played with it I'll upload here again and also include an untouched since 30sec exposure for comparison

[Asmodi]

Thats great Asmodi, I don't mind at all, I need to understand flats next I'm currently playing with the full 30 sets of images I took for the Pleiades as I had more time to play tonight that I did at midnight last night. once i've played with it I'll upload here again and also include an untouched since 30sec exposure for comparison

An untouched 30 sec would be nice as I could then go through a step by step of what I did.

[Eri]

here's the file i've been playing around with tonight. I'm rather pleased with the result and theres also a 30sec here or if its of more use to you Asmodi you can download the 100mb Tif file from http://we.tl/pH5udaUr2R

[Asmodi]

Had a go.

Was nice to work with a full size file.

Im a bit puzzled as to where you are getting the dirty browns from on your processed image.

All I have done with my attempt is Auto Tone and colour then a strong "S" curve in Curves and finished it off with a little USM 89%, 1.2, 0 All in Photoshop.

Anyway here is what I came up with.

[Eri]

I thnk that might be from the adjustments made to the exposure and colour balance I did, it might be to do with a neighbour lighting his fire and smoking the area out for a while.

I do like what you've done there though.

Now I think I've managed to figure out polar alignment I think  I'll concentrate on making flats etc and how to view my camera view on my surface to help focus better

[glowingturnip]

Had a go.

Was nice to work with a full size file.

Im a bit puzzled as to where you are getting the dirty browns from on your processed image.

All I have done with my attempt is Auto Tone and colour then a strong "S" curve in Curves and finished it off with a little USM 89%, 1.2, 0 All in Photoshop.

Anyway here is what I came up with.

I'm afraid I'd say that's much too harsh - you've black-clipped the background so much that the nebulosity has all gone, and white-clipped the stars too. 

I think there's actually quite a bit of nebolusity trying to come out in that first image - I might have a little play tonight if that's ok.

Cheers,

[Eri]

by all means, anyone who wants to have a mess about with the file feel free. the tif download link will expire I think by the 11th nov but if it says its not valid before then let me know and i'll make another one

[glowingturnip]

had a quick go,here:

I flattened the backgound removing the vignetting using DBE in Pixinsight, although you can do similar with the Gradient Xterminator plugin for Photoshop, then colour balanced it for the background and the non-cluster stars, then a quick stretch to show it here.  You can see some of the nebulosity around Merope (top right) and Alcyone (top middle).  Copy of the background-neutralised and colour calibrated tiff here for you to play with- https://www.dropbox.com/s/s2rlmguwfgeyoey/_30_10_15_0107_DBE.tif?dl=0

I'll be honest though, it's very noisy, which is going to limit how much you can get out of this, but it's pretty good considering you've got a total of about 2 minutes worth of data ;-)

Have another go, take your time, and collect about 1-2 hours worth of data, and you'll find the noise becomes a lot better controlled meaning you can bring out the nebulosity a lot better.  Take flats as well and they'll help with the vignetting.  They've been there 100 million years already, so there's no rush     

[Eri]

yeah I know the more data i have the better i just need to understand creating flats and bias now then how to incorporate them into the stacks etc... also to figure out why deepskystacker crashes out of memory when trying to stack more than 5 or 6 images heh for Merope and Alcyone I have about 40 30sec images i could use and the same for Capella but it just doesnt seem to like using more than 6 or so files unless I need to crop from tif to jpg etc then stack, DSS never hits higher than 2.5gb ram and I have 8gb with usually 55%+ free at any one time

[glowingturnip]

yeah, never go into jpeg until the very last step of processing when you're publishing - the compression loses data and adds artifacts.

I don't use DSS myself, others can probably help you better, but can you use the raw CR2 files without converting them to tiff first, 100MB seems a large file size ?  8GB should be plenty,that's what I've got here.

[glowingturnip]

hmm, my attempt looks darker on my work monitor than it did on the laptop at home - you might want to give it an extra stretch if it's dark for you

[GeoffB]

Hi

the images look really good I now really do need to uprgrade my mount to a goto and get eqmod tracking. I am also upset that I missed a couple of clear skies being out at Houston last week, got back home to awful cloud levels and blooming fireworks.

Geoff

[laser_jock99]

Had a quick go with your original jpeg image:

The potential is there but there is a lot of noise (both jpeg compression and camera noise) the only cure is longer exposures & more of them.

Blue channel of the jpeg file!

[Eri]

yeah unfortunately the only way i can get longer exposures is to get an electronic shutter control for my camera, unattended it only goes to 30seconds this was just more of a first dip into AP, 

This image is one I played around with in DSS then photoshop CS5.5 using the full 22x30 second subs I took, no flats or darks etc which I shall be learning how to do while waiting for the next clear sky.

When I get a nice clear sky all night on a day off I shall go hunting for more DSO's etc and fill up the 2 16gb and 8gb cards i have see how many that takes then look into getting more cards if needed.

[laser_jock99]

30 seconds is a bit limiting I guess. Better get one of these ASAP

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Time-lapse-intervalometer-remote-timer-shutter-for-Canon-DSLR-650D-550D-700D-70D-/161656789957?hash=item25a37edbc5:g:Qh0AAOSwyQtV6XGi

Very handy, good value bit of kit (and no software/laptop/PSU required!)

[RSM]

That's exactly the same intervalometer I have for my Canon 500D - works a treat and red light background light too. Set it up and leave it to run, exposure after exposure. Sits nicely on the eyepiece try of my HEQ5.