A not very good M1

[blinky]

Stil it's only 3 X 10 min subs, really need a lot more. Also looks like the guiding was not doing too goo with 10min subs I think I should have used a barlow and not a reducer with this but the camera was all focused after taking the Pleiades

(click to enlarge)

[661-pete]

That's actually a very nice crab, Craig, pity about the guiding (perhaps shorter subs and more of them?) Hope you don't mind, had a little play with your image including trying to get rid of the trailing. There's a wealth of filament detail in there just asking to jump out!

[beamish]

great recovery Pete.

[Doc]

Jesus Pete you wouldn't think it's the same picture.

[blinky]

Jings Pete, you're gonna have to tel me how you did that :shock:

[beamish]

On this thread I hope Blinky

[blinky]

Quite an amazing improvment, think I am gonna need some more processing practice.

[beamish]

Lets face it ,processing is a whole other ball game isn't it?

[gary1968]

Another nice one Craig, and what a transformation after Pete had a fiddle around with it..........

Gary

[Sam]

That's a very good image Craig (just needed a bit more tweaking) the red filaments are very obvious so good job on getting them.

[Psychobilly]

Lets face it ,processing is a whole other ball game isn't it?

It is indeed ... just make sure your not working with your original data or the results of the stacking and play away... wenever you get to a stage that your happy with do a save as... this way you keep your milestone images during the process OK theres undo and history etc but i prefer this staged approach...

A smashing rescue Pete

[jcm]

Something like "Focus Magic" will improve badly focused and trailed images.

John

[661-pete]

Oooh-errrhh! :oops: :oops: :oops: Don't embarrass me please, I can hardly count as the expert here, and I'm sure others could have done a lot better! I just happened to notice the thread first I suppose - and thought I'd have a quick 20-minute play around!

Anyway here goes. The trail removal was with a little de-convolution tool I use a lot on my own images (:oops:), called Focus Magic (download $45, it was cheaper when I bought it!) I don't know whether Noel's tools have a similar de-trailing gadget, I know there's a star size and halo reduction but I don't know if that gets the result you want. Anyway, using the Fix Motion Blur function for a distance of 3 pixels in the correct direction, had the desired effect. Then to lose the noise, I went for sky subtraction using layers - preferable to pulling the curves I thought. I expect most of you know the technique - duplicate layers, blur the copy (15 pxl gaussian), darken the centre of the blurred image to an average level, subtract from the original with about 80% opacity I think it was. That took care of most of the noise but not all. So I just shifted up the black point a bit - more in the red channel than the others since most of the remaining noise was red. And that's it! Did hardly anything to the nebula region itself - after de-blurring it came up a treat!

Hope this helps.

[blinky]

Cheers Pete, I will give that a wee try myself! Thanks again for the cleanup operation :salute:

[661-pete]

I've been using FocusMagic for a couple of years now - because I'm not guiding and can't do so on my present mount - and the time is not yet ripe for an upgrade to EQ6 or similar! It's a 'cheat' I know but it will work to rescue something from what would otherwise be a totally wasted imaging night. Your M1 is actually a pretty good capture, compared with some I've seen - I could not have extracted the detail you can see, if the detail wasn't already there latent in the image in the first place.

The motion blur feature is not in Noel's tools (just checked) nor is it in ImagesPlus which I use. As I recall it, if you get the free download of Focusmagic, you're allowed ten goes on it before you have to pay! It will remove up to twenty pixels worth of blurring (if you've got more than that the image really does have to be thrown away!) in any direction, settable in 5° increments. Best way to arrive at the optimum blur length and direction is by trial and error. Also I find it best to use it on each separate sub, after dark subtraction but before stacking. My trailing lines are not all in the same direction, there must be some PE in declination as well as RA.

You have to use it as a plugin to Photoshop or PaintShopPro - although the program will work stand-alone you don't get the best use of its features.

[Psychobilly]

Thanks for posting the "rescue" workflow Pete I am sure it will be useful info for a lot of us...

Billy....