The Flame and Horsehead Nebulas II

[Stub Mandrel]

I think this is the shot where the 130P-DS has earned its keep.

It still isn't perfect, and I will keep coming back and tweaking this, and adding more data, but this image is so much more than anything I remotely expected to achieve when I stared imaging.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nice work, what are the exposure details please?

[Stub Mandrel]

Thanks, I took 100 2-minute subs at 800 ISO using the modded 450D, but I only stacked 60% because of cloud passing through and some with eggy-stars caused by adding a 50x150 finder outboard which more or less put the mount in perfect balance and I forgot to make it East-heavy again! 

Edit: I had been experimenting with average stack instead of kappa-sigma in DSS, and got a blue trail diagonally opposite Alnitak, as the PA slowly drifted over the 3 1/2 hours. Stacking with KS got rid of it completely. I did have to clone stamp out two refraction spikes from stars out of frame.

[Stub Mandrel]

I'm at it already - I couldn't help doing a side to side with Olly's magnum opus, so I've tried to match his colour and vibrancy, with limited success.

 

[ollypenrice]

You have matched the colour and vibrancy and the only thing you don't have is the signal. Bear in mind that my effort had an absolute shedload of data from a top class imaging site. If you are really into quality then just devote the time to this image. You have the rest. It's sharp and tight. All it needs is more. Welcome to the Nutters' Club, Stub!

lly

[Stub Mandrel]

Thanks Olly!

Alnitak is a scope magnet - I will be back ;-)

[StargeezerTim]

Lovely image! I am like you in getting images better than i thought would be possible for me when i started this obsession/hobby 

Amazing the sights you can see with a cheap scope and a DSLR...

[spillage]

Hi All

Sorry to jump in but I have only just started with guiding and this is only my second target. I thought it was a bit too colourful and the black looks a bit clipped but did this in startools and finished off in gimp. Has been cropped a fair bit but will go back and see if I can improve on it.

Really struggled to remove the spikes from zeta.

12 x 600 lights and 10 flats and 10 bias.

Any advice to improve would be appreciated and of course will add more data when I can.

spill.

 

 

[ollypenrice]

10 hours ago, spillage said:

Hi All

Sorry to jump in but I have only just started with guiding and this is only my second target. I thought it was a bit too colourful and the black looks a bit clipped but did this in startools and finished off in gimp. Has been cropped a fair bit but will go back and see if I can improve on it.

Really struggled to remove the spikes from zeta.

12 x 600 lights and 10 flats and 10 bias.

Any advice to improve would be appreciated and of course will add more data when I can.

spill.

 

 

Probably best to put this in a new thread. I'd say that your spider needs a tweak because the diff spikes are splitting. On the processing you have an excess of green and a bit too much noise reduction for my taste but you're doing well here.

Olly

[Stub Mandrel]

11 hours ago, spillage said:

the black looks a bit clipped

Looks pretty good to me, but the black always seems to look clipped when images from Startools are posted here.

[SonnyE]

I like it Neil, you give me things to try and shoot for.

Does my Avatar look familiar?

I credit Orion's Nebula for getting me into this mess anyway. I was seeing what I could see through my spotting scope, and Orion dragged me right through that scope. It was the first thing I observed besides the moon.

Here I am, hopelessly entwined in trying to image DSO's. I have C-11 cooking as I type.