HH Help please.

[DougM43]

Hi all, with the lovely clear night we had a couple of nights ago i decided i would try and image the horsehead, its a target i have tried to see with my own eyes on many occasions but with no joy,  the reason i bought my imaging set up was to enable me to see  some of those difficult objects for myself and for that purpose it has worked well but for this target as its such an iconic one i tried my absolute best to get the best image i could, so armed with information from this forum and various other places i set up with high expectations of a reasonably good image.

Now i am happy with the image, i can see it, polar alignment seems ok,  i think i framed it ok, focus isn't quite perfect despite spending quite a lot of time focusing which is a shame, but the thing that strikes me most is the lack of color, i'm pretty sure iv'e seen HH images with similar amount of exposure time and they are full of color, so where is it?

The image was taken with an ED 80 pro with a focal reducer atop of a HEQ5 and a modified cannon 40d fitted with an Astronomik light pollution filter, 67, 60 second Raw subs at 800 iso and stacked in DSS. I tried to improve the image using Gimp but other than  lightning it a bit and adding a bit of contrast nothing seemed to help. Hopefully i'm going to get another chance at this this winter so what do i change? is it the camera, it was sold to me as astro modified, is there any way i can check this? More subs, longer subs, higher iso? there must be something i'm missing.

Thanks for reading, Doug.

         

[PeterCPC]

You would probably have got better results on a less Moonlit night. Longer subs would also help.

Peter

[Adreneline]

Hi Doug,

As you say a nicely framed image; my early attempts often ended up with half a head or no head at all!

Any chance you can supply the final DSS tif file (embedded or applied) so I, or others, might have a play and see if I/we can find some colour using PI/PS?

Adrian

 

[lukebl]

Nicely framed, but you have a lot of vignetting there. Taking flats would reduce that and enable you to stretch the image more. That, and longer subs, would help a lot.

[DougM43]

Hi Peter, it did cross my mind that the moon may spoil the image slightly, i kept the subs to 60s to try and keep Alnitak under control but looking at the individual subs they are all very dark, i'm not sure how long i can go without guiding, i think the most iv'e gone in the past was around 90s, how long would you suggest?

Adrian, thanks for the offer, i have attached two files, one (the darker one) is the stacked picture straight from DSS and the other is the same but has been lightend in DSS which is how i sent it to Gimp, hopefully you will do a better job of it than i managed, I look forward to seeing what you come up with,

Cheers, Doug

 

stacked.TIF

Autosave.tif

[DougM43]

15 minutes ago, lukebl said:

Nicely framed, but you have a lot of vignetting there. Taking flats would reduce that and enable you to stretch the image more. That, and longer subs, would help a lot.

Flats, Darks and bias frames are something iv'e still to get my head round, longer subs seems to be a recurring thing, how far can i go with my HEQ5 without guiding? or do i need to be looking in that direction.

cheers, Doug. 

[PeterCPC]

30 minutes ago, DougM43 said:

Hi Peter, it did cross my mind that the moon may spoil the image slightly, i kept the subs to 60s to try and keep Alnitak under control but looking at the individual subs they are all very dark, i'm not sure how long i can go without guiding, i think the most iv'e gone in the past was around 90s, how long would you suggest?

 

Yes it's always best to avoid the bright Moon unless you are doing Ha imaging. I don't know how long you can get with that mount unguided but the longer the better. Why not go for guiding?

Peter

[bobro]

Good image Doug, especially without guiding. Flats won't cost anything to take and make a real difference to the image ready for processing.

I use the same setup of DSS and GIMP, so had a go at processing your image (attached). There is plenty of colour. There are various methods to process an image - the way I bring out colour is to set Saturation in DSS to about 20% before aligning the colour peaks and perhaps moving the brightness up a bit in DSS (see attached).

To process your image in GIMP I reduced the resolution (to reduce noise) and tried to remove the gradient (vignetting) manually before doing a bit of stretching. It's better to take flats though as flats also remove dust bunnies.

As mentioned above, guiding helps with longer exposures and makes for good images, though some enjoy the challenge of short exposure imaging.

Not sure I got the final colours right in the image and others will no doubt do better, but it gives an idea.

Look like your camera is astro modified as it picked up the red nebulosity well.

Bob

 

 

[DougM43]

39 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

Yes it's always best to avoid the bright Moon unless you are doing Ha imaging. I don't know how long you can get with that mount unguided but the longer the better. Why not go for guiding?

Peter

thanks Peter,

No reason not to go for guiding other than i don't think I've yet got a full understanding of what i have so far, i already own a zwo asi120mc  which i guess would be a reasonable guide camera so if guiding is the next logical step then i could get a small guide scope and learn how.

[PeterCPC]

Yes give it a go. The ASI would do fine as a guide camera. You're halfway there.

Peter

[DougM43]

35 minutes ago, bobro said:

Good image Doug, especially without guiding. Flats won't cost anything to take and make a real difference to the image ready for processing.

I use the same setup of DSS and GIMP, so had a go at processing your image (attached). There is plenty of colour. There are various methods to process an image - the way I bring out colour is to set Saturation in DSS to about 20% before aligning the colour peaks and perhaps moving the brightness up a bit in DSS (see attached).

To process your image in GIMP I reduced the resolution (to reduce noise) and tried to remove the gradient (vignetting) manually before doing a bit of stretching. It's better to take flats though as flats also remove dust bunnies.

As mentioned above, guiding helps with longer exposures and makes for good images, though some enjoy the challenge of short exposure imaging.

Not sure I got the final colours right in the image and others will no doubt do better, but it gives an idea.

Bob

 

 

Thanks Bob, much improved, so there is color there, i think there's as much if not more to learn about processing than there is in taking the image in the first place, thanks for the tips, ill give it a go with your settings myself and see what i can do 

[Adreneline]

11 hours ago, DougM43 said:

Adrian, thanks for the offer, i have attached two files, one (the darker one) is the stacked picture straight from DSS and the other is the same but has been lightend in DSS which is how i sent it to Gimp, hopefully you will do a better job of it than i managed, I look forward to seeing what you come up with,

Hi Doug,

I had a go with your autosav file in PI and PS. As others have already said some flats would help to get rid of some of the problems, however, there is definitely colour lurking in there! I used ABE twice to try to get rid of the background gradients and then used MLT to try to reduce the noise before using Arcsinh to stretch the image. I used MLT less aggresively again after stretching before moving the image to PS. I tried to reduce the blue halos using Neil Carboni actions and also tried to neutralise the background a bit more.

I am sure others with more expertise could do far better but it shows there is some good data lurking in there.

HTH.

Good luck

Adrian

[DougM43]

Wow, I can see you must have spent a fair bit of time processing the image and for that I thank you very much,  the amount of colour you've found is remarkable, looking at your attempt and mine it shows how much I still have to learn.

Awesome, thank you.

I spent a bit of time yesterday reading about calibration frames as the comments I've received suggest these are a must so next time out I'll be taking these, and I think I've decided on a guide scope, the 60mm zoo finder guider has good reviews so I think that's the one.

I assume PS is photoshop?  PI, what's that please? 

Thanks again, Doug

[PeterCPC]

PI is Pixinsight.

Peter

[Adreneline]

1 hour ago, DougM43 said:

I spent a bit of time yesterday reading about calibration frames as the comments I've received suggest these are a must so next time out I'll be taking these

Hi Doug,

You could always take a few calibration frames retrospectively and at least apply them to this image and see what happens - afer all, what have you got to lose? The Flats might help with the vignetting even if they don't remove the dust bunnies. Trying these things is all part of the fun! Nothing ventured nothing gained. If it makes it worse you can blame me

Good luck.

Adrian 

[Stu Wilson]

My attempt

[DougM43]

Not too shabby at all that Stu, I particularly like the brightness of the flame, thanks,

I'm going to have another go at it myself (as soon as my good lady stops loading me up with chores to do) now I have an idea what's possible with it.

cheers, Doug.