M51 - reprocessed

[beamer3.6m]

I reprocessed the M51 I captured the other day.

I have managed to darken the sky but retain the brightness of the object so I am quite pleased.

(click to enlarge)

[saturn5]

I'm no expert,far from it but i think you should be careful as to how black you make the sky,too black and i think it starts to look unnatural,that said you should be really pleased with your images,you're definately on the right road to success and i'm just jealous that you're getting out to image,i'm gonna have to wait till August for the dark to come back.The joys of living on the 59th parallel.

[beamer3.6m]

I know what you mean about the sky being too dark but I think I prefer this look.

I like to print the images sometimes and when the sky is darker they seem to come out better.

Shame about the weather your having.

[saturn5]

Weather is just beautiful just now,had almost a week of cloudless evenings,the shame is its not dark,went out about midnight on monday and took a 4min unguided shot of the NGC7000 area with the camera piggybacked and the lens set at 200mm,i was amazed just how little i had picked up for 4mins.The upper half of the image was darker but the bottom half had this light blue glow to it and had no star fields in it at all.

On the plus side my drift aligning is getting good and quick with it.

[beamer3.6m]

I too am getting to grips with polar alignment and I can easily get 1 min subs.

My best to date has been 3 mins which I was very pleased with.

I have to say I am very pleased with this shot.