A Little Bit of Heart and Soul

[Stub Mandrel]

Another one of my near-misses. this is the heart and soul nebulas. I've put it here because I added in an extra luminance layer made from the R channel. it seems to have worked quite well at rescuing some detail of the nebulas, but I would be keen to get advice on making the best of this technique.

[Astrosurf]

They're frustrating these near misses! Did you use your Astro-Modded EOS 10D?

It's rather noisy. How many subs, what length etc, etc?

Alexxx

[Stub Mandrel]

In theory 30 40s subs. A close look shows eight of these were very wrong, plus a few other issues. I'm trying again.

Good news is that the 22 all have the whole pair in :-)

[Stub Mandrel]

Wow, this is a really tough one to process. Even after getting rid of the unwanted frames, it's still a very faint target. I should have upped the exposure, this is a bit better. I used 30 second darks when i should be using 40 second. Time to put the camera back in the fridge.

[StargeezerTim]

That's a lovely image. Looks a bit like a sandpit, except the each grain of sand is a sun. Astonishing!

[Astrosurf]

Do try and put your camera outside somewhere safe and dry, like a lockable shed or even in your car when it's cooled down. I've done both and the darks have been OK. I do it on the next night when it's likely to be about the same temp, if I'm lucky! Or later the same night. I can't remember what room for temperature error you have for taking darks. 4 degrees either side??

[wimvb]

Nice catch! I tried this subject a few days ago but couldn't really resolve the nebula on my un-modded camera.

Using the R channel as luminance will exagorate star colours as well, making blue stars more intense blue and red stars more intense red.

I think that with longer or many more exposures on a modded camera (assuming you used the astro-modded EOS 10D) you can lift the nebula above the noise level.

Good luck and clear skies

[wimvb]

Actually, having a look at my attempt again I was surprised:

Pentax K20D (not modified) 135 mm lens f/3.5 240 seconds at ISO 1600

20 light frames, bias and flats. No dark frames

Pocessed in PixInsight

I guess some minds do think alike.

[Stub Mandrel]

It's a challenging subject because there are too many stars!

I keep trying: