Wizard Nebula

[gonzostar]

Hi

managed to collect a image of the wizard nebula

26 * 2 MIN lights (unguided), with darks, bias 

DSS then gimp

8" SCT (with 6.3 focal reducer) on a AVX

450D Canon camera

Any feedback on improvements welcome. Or please feel free to improve this image

Thanks for looking

Dean

[wimvb]

Great catch again, Dean.

Some tips:

If you crop the image to exclude stacking offsets, the resulting image is cleaner.

In the top left corner there are some left over hot pixels. I counted 25, so they probably follow your stacking offsets. In DSS there is a cosmetic correction option that can be used to get rid of hot pixels that weren't / won't be removed by daks or pixel rejection.

[gonzostar]

Thanks Wim, Will check for pixel rejection in DSS next time. Do you crop the light frames before you stack them or crop the final image in gimp or equivalent? 

[wimvb]

I crop immediately after stacking. Mainly because I do gradient removal as the next step, and I don't want to put samples on bad areas in the image.

Besides, if you have stacking edges left, they will interfere with the black point setting during stretching.