Ring Nebula Sat 16th Dec

[John MacDonald]

I have just started with astronomy and decided to try and capture some decent images of the objects i look at. I have a  WO megrez 90mm and an Altair GPCAM2 290C Colour. This photo is the result of stacking 150 x 9s subs and 10 darks captured using sharp cap, gain 2120 with a lumicon deep sky filter attached. only processing on this is a small amount of colour balancing in Deep Sky Stacker before saving as a tiff. As we can no longer buy Photoshop and my copy vanished 2 laptops ago I do not  wish to pay 9.99 per month to adobe. I have purchased star tools but haven not been able to produce anything worthwhile from it yet, GIMP is very hit and miss. If anyone has experience with GIMP feel free to process this image but please explain what you did, I claim no copyright on this photo. Any and all advice is welcome.

ring.TIF

[tooth_dr]

Hi John, welcome to the forum.  I've attached your images as a JPEG, you should get more feeback that way, as not everyone will open a TIFF file esp on a mobile etc.

 

 

[John MacDonald]

Many Thanks, my profile picture of the dumb bell nebula was taken using the same camera and i was overjoyed with the result i got when i processed it in GIMP, cant remember what i did and have not been able to repeat it. I have tried watching some tutorials on you tube though even for beginners many assume a level of knowledge most us do not have. Are there any classes at any of the star parties? 

[sloz1664]

Hi John & welcome to the Lounge

There are some good youtube videos for Startools. But, as I'm not familiar with Gimp I cannot add anything there. You could upload your image to the Startools forum I'm sure someone will point you in the right direction.

With regards to your local Astro clubs, societies etc.. Have a look on the web . All the clubs I have visited have welcomed me with friendship , good humour and great advice. Don't be afraid to participate.

Steve

[wigggyy]

You can also try a demo version of Astroart or you can also get a free trial of Pixinsight and see what you think 

David

[John MacDonald]

Thanks Guys, will take a look at these, a colleague gave me a copy of photoshop c6 with a licence unfortunately it doesn't run on windows 10. 

[alacant]

On 18/12/2017 at 15:01, John MacDonald said:

colour balancing in Deep Sky Stacker before saving as a tiff

Hi. I use both GIMP and StarTools but the image is too stretched to be able to work with. Can you post the tif straight from DSS? No manipulation? I'm sure there's some really nice colour and detail in there. Cheers and clear skies.

[John MacDonald]

Thanks will upload a new copy this evening

[John MacDonald]

copy of ring nebula stacked in DSS using default settings no stretching

ring nebula.TIF

[alacant]

21 hours ago, John MacDonald said:

DSS using default settings no stretching

Levels and curves in GIMP. Try longer exposures? HTH.

[John MacDonald]

Thanks, I will see if I can match, I know 9s are short just trying to get a feel, I am surprised at the amount of detail you can get on short exposures. If I increase exposure time to 30s the ring appears to become a large luminous object, should I keep bringing the gain down as I increase exposure and would it be better in raw rather than rgb.