M 57

[Dinu Adrian]

This is my first attempt at M57  Any advice for improvement?

[Dinu Adrian]

It's about 19 minutes of total exposure with 20 second light frames.

[Stu]

Looks nice as a first attempt. Perhaps let people know what equipment you used and what subs etc went to make it up and that will allow them to help you more.

EDIT I see our posts crossed  

 

[Dinu Adrian]

I used a HEQ5 with a 200/1000 Newtonian with a Canon 100D. Processed using DSS, PixInsight LE 2.0, Fits Liberator and Photshop CS6. The output from DSS was a FITS image which I split into channels in PixInsight and the processed each of the separately in fits Liberator to obtain a tiff image for each channel. Then, I combined them in Photoshop and applied Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation and High Pass Filter. That's about it, I guess.

[ollypenrice]

It's very sharp and clean.  

To take it further you'd be after the outer shells in very long subs. You might need to let the background sky up a bit in brightness for that.

Olly

[Dinu Adrian]

Thank you!  It's quite hard for me to get long subs because I can't seem to be able to get good enough polar alignment. I  hope I'll find a solution. I know I can get to 40s or even 60s but I just can't be precise enough.

[PatrickGilliland]

When i used eq6 (assuming its similar) i first used scope for rough PA then alignmaster (its cheap effective and a simple) slew to a star - re-selw until central, slew to second star repeat, it then advises of required adjustment.  You can make the adjustment (centralise star using alt-ax then dec) while taking picture and getting in centred on cross hairs.  Rin a few times and you will be spot on.  Once practiced you can set up and do 3-5 reps in < 15 minutes.  I like it so much i always use as start of a PA rouitne even on my PME before i start modelling.

Then as Olly said you can ramp up the exposure time significantly and get all that extra detail.

 

Paddy

[Dinu Adrian]

Thank you, I will try it the next time I go out. I'm really looking forward to it