M51, despite lack of dark and light pollution

[Stub Mandrel]

I'm quite happy with this image from last night, I think it's my first galaxy that really shows some detail and colour wiithout having to be over-processed, although it took a fair bit of stretching and gamma adjustment. Stacked in DSS, processing in photoshop and tweaked for noise only in Astra. 101 30-second subs at ISO1600, 50 darks, 17 flats and 30 bias. There was terrible, very fine, colourful noise, but as it was more or less at a single pixel level, Astra was able to knock it on the head with little loss of detail. Canon 450D astro modded, with 150PL, cropped to about 50%.

 

[xtreemchaos]

nice one Neil, lovely detail, id be very happy with it.well done mate.thanks charl.

[laudropb]

Very nice capture.

[Stub Mandrel]

I've gone over this lots of times, trying to reduce noise and improve colour, also I've saved it as a PNG. I hope folks agree this is better:

[johnfosteruk]

I love all the images you guys capture of DSOs despite the lack of darkness during the summer months.