Then, and Now. Helix Nebula revisited...

[SonnyE]

So I appear to have the rest of the week in the blues. Clear Skies Chart.

I ran up my alignment, and adjusted my Polar Alignment, per usual. Then started hopping about and collected a few more Messier targets. But I really wanted to find some of my favorites, Nebulae.

My thoughts turned to the Helix Nebula from last year, so I pecked it into Stellarium and it was in my Southern skies and pre-meridian. So I let Stellarium slew me to it and took a shot. Bust my buttons it was almost centered! So I tried a few imaging runs. It crossed the meridian, so I did a meridian flip. I had a bit of difficulty finding it in my imaging camera, but it was my fault for running too short of times. Once I got the ghost in view, I just took a giant leap of faith and took an 800 second one shot color image. That came out nice, but a bit under exposed.

So I entered in a 1200 second image and sat back while the 20 minute exposure cooked away. And I kept at it until I was about to lose my target to a tree.

So I think I've made a little progress over the last year with my imaging... As shot, no additional post processing, fit > jpg.

Edited October 19, 2016 by SonnyE
sPellin korectchon

[wimvb]

That's a great improvement. Is the second image a single sub? You seem to have hot pixels left that should calibrate out.

[SonnyE]

40 minutes ago, wimvb said:

That's a great improvement. Is the second image a single sub? You seem to have hot pixels left that should calibrate out.

Thank You, Wim.

Yes, I haven't quite got that figured out. I use an Orion G3 color Deep Space camera. And in color modes I get the "rainbow sprinkles". The longer the exposure, the worse they can get.

If I save the image as a jpg, I can adjust the sprinkles to stars, like I've done here, in Adobe Photoshop with Topaz filtering. But it is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me to do post processing. I'm having to come around to post processing, but I'm kicking and screaming getting there.

First image is an 800s RGB, Second image is the same 1200s as above, just post processed a little bit. (Which is about all I am capable of so far.)

 

Edited October 19, 2016 by SonnyE

[wimvb]

The "sprinkles" as you call them, are hot pixels. You can correct for them by taking a dark frame and subtract that from the light frame. Ideally you would take many frames and stack them in a program such as Deep Sky Stacker, but you may have some success correcting single frames in a program that can process raw images (even tif). I have done this occasionaly in RawTherapee (freeware).

There is a lot of information and knowledge in this forum, just a click of a mouse away.

Good luck