Owl

[anthony]

Hi All,

It has been forever since I have been out imaging as life has been really busy. But there has been a few clear nights recently and I had the chance. The moon was mighty big so I tried a cluster. The camera is an SBIG ST400XCM I have borrowed and I am keenly trying to find out all about it. The scope is a WO 80mm triplet with a TRF2008 FF/FR hence the nice round stars. I have cropped a little so as to remove any stacking artefacts at the edges. They were not really obvious but the histogram showed that there was something there. (Sorry, but it has been ages since I have imaged and so you are going to get every boring little detail )

20x90sec selfguided (a breeze with this camera (but then again I am probably at around 400mm FL)).

I applied darks and flats and flat darks. The flats were a bit rough but better than nothing. There was quite a bit of vignetting on a chip this size (15mmx15mm or so) and this is significantly reduced by the flats.

Whilst processing on my lappy, the image looked fine. When shifted to my PC it looked green I have tried to play with this. What do you see in this respect?

There is a link to the full size image as a jpeg on this page (an old and unloved website that should really be tidied up.)

http://www.astrophotography.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/4.html

A quick question to the guys with the mega pixel ccds. What on earth do you do to stop your computer choking when trying to open, calibrate and stack 20 several mega pixel images? The majority of my time was spent waiting for the computer to do its stuff whilst mopping its fevered brow.

Cheers

Anthony

[anthony]

A reprocess (after another look at the clusters posted over the last few weeks) and a resize to fit the screen better.

Anthony

[Doc]

Thats a great shot.

Loads of details with many coloured stars.

[MikeD]

Great result Ant,and no green hue on my screen.

the first image has a nice feel to it IMO , a more natural background.

Mike.

[Cloudwatcher]

Ooo,Ooo! Lovely image and great processing too. :salute:

Cheers,CW.

[brendant]

Two great images Anthony, great widefields, nice star colour and detail, agree with Mike, I think the first image posted has a more natural feel to it, still superb images

Brendan

[Beyond_Vision]

The first image shows a small amount of vignetting left but the reprocess has got rid of it but may be clipped on less bright monitors. The focus and tracking and star shape to the corners are spot on . An excellent capture Anthony.

Regards

Kevin

[qcdougn]

Very lovely shot...would you believe I just viewed this for the first time last week? It's a great cluster...can't recall the NGC number though?....Maybe I'll try it some day soon.

Doug

[Cloudwatcher]

Just re-read your post and on my screen I see a grey/blue centre section background in the 1st. image which appears magenta in the rework.Had a quick go using the Hue/Saturation tool in Photoshop reducing the magenta and increasing saturation in the master............. This is the result which looks a bit brighter on my screen but may not appear 'right' to your eye. Cheers,CW.

[anthony]

Hi CW,

I had another run through myself and got a result that was quite similar to your process. The central hotspot (now absent on your process) is most likely due to the fact that my flats were very rough indeed.

Cheers Guys for the kind comments

Anthony

[glennbech]

Great! I like the fact that the surrounding sky is rahter empty. It makes the cluster stand out like a lonely owl in the night :-)

[Ben Ritchie]

Looking good!

[glennbech]

... But... I personally like the nickname "ET-Cluster" better.

[starf]

very nice image, and remarkably good colours considering the strength of moonlight recently.

mike

[LostNSpace]

Good result considering how bright the moon is at the moment Anthony.......

Mark

[Psychobilly]

Nice Owl Ant...

Billy...

[MartinB]

Great to see you posting an image Ant. It is a beauty as well. The star colour looks excellent, I imagine you have upped the saturation a little to achieve the effect. Personally I've never gone for the leaving the sky a bit milky thing. I like a dark sky so long as you are not clipping. Your second process looks spot on to me.