M101 photo

[cwit1]

Hi all,

Finally had enough clear sky (at the right time) to get some imaging done. 

I got some 38 lights of M101 the other night along with darks, flats and bias. I captured with Backyard EOS and processed them with Nebulosity and PS6 and Lightroom ( for the noise reduction).

Still struggling with the processing though! but overall quite pleased. What do you think?

Chris.

[wavydavy]

Very nice...................whats the object on the right?? Gonna have to check my images of the same to see if I have it as well......

 

[cwit1]

Just now, wavydavy said:

Very nice...................whats the object on the right?? Gonna have to check my images of the same to see if I have it as well......

 

Not really sure, didnt know if it was supposed to be there or not so i just left it :-)

[wavydavy]

Its a great image pulling in loads more background galaxys as well............ tried running astrometry through it but nothing shows.........will try again. Looks like a big PN.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nice image. The object n the right is a companion galaxy disrupted by M101, NGC 5474 I think.

Some of the stars and faint galaxies look a little green to me, you may want to check your colour balance or use something like Hasta La Vista Green (plugin).

[cwit1]

Here's another with Hasta La Vista Green ran on it, much better I agree, Thanks !!

Chris

 

[wxsatuser]

Yes thats better, well done.

[Dbswales]

Lovely image. That's really effective. 

[StuartJPP]

Yep, 2nd one is much better.

[Pompey Monkey]

What do I think? I think it's very good: Not over processed and the black point is not clipped, both common mistakes, especially with limited data.

[des anderson]

WOW what a fantastic pair of images,just brill,thanks for sharing.Des

[alacant]

3 minutes ago, Pompey Monkey said:

[...]the black point is not clipped[...]

Not sure of the rules here so I hope I'm not hijacking the thread... Could anyone explain what that means? In simple terms if possible. I tried google but ended up on hedge trimmers! TIA.

[Pompey Monkey]

8 minutes ago, alacant said:

Not sure of the rules here so I hope I'm not hijacking the thread... Could anyone explain what that means? In simple terms if possible. I tried google but ended up on hedge trimmers! TIA.

Sure. In attempts to make the background sky look "black" (which it isn't) some people slide the left hand histogram control of the image processing (the "black point") software to the right... This has the effect of making every part of the image below a certain brightness appear as the same uniform black....

Unfortunately, much of the interesting (and hard worked for) parts of the image of astronomical objects lie in just this region of "not quite black". Making all of this subtle information the same colour is really defeating the point of astro imaging

[alacant]

Yeah, got it. Thanks. I was one of those who thought that the sky had to be black otherwise you'd failed and it was a bad image. My (false sense of security) trick was to come out of StarTools and bum up the contrast in GIMP. How right you are: how much faint detail is lost. I just took a step forward:)

[ollypenrice]

With the green sorted you have a superb image and need to be banned for life from the beginners' bit of the imaging forum!  Flat, neutral background sky, small, accurately coloured stars, structured main galaxy, interesting faint fuzzies abounding, good tracking. An expert performance!

Olly

[cwit1]

Many thanks for the kind comments gents, very encouraging ?

Olly   an expert performance?....not if you'd seen and heard me performing.....not very polished I'm afraid..?

Chris  

 

[Mercona]

Awesome photo. I just recently am getting into astrophotography. It's very difficult to get a good picture to say the least. I've been using registax6 but it seems to crash 90% of the time.