Messier 17 the Swan.

[alan potts]

At least this is one where you can see the shape of a swan in even a modest telescope. This is 2.5 hours of a mix of 3 and 4 minutes at 800 and 1600iso on the 805mm apo with the D40, so nothing new. Apart from Guiding that is, as the EQmod guide doesn't wish to help me, for whatever reason , I reverted to ST4, which I feel is not as good. Could be wrong there and it may be condition related, but just a feeling I have.

Feel free to rip it to bits, can't say I like the colour so much, the more time I added the more purple it seemed to become, 1 hour of capture made it mainly red, think I preferred it that way, could change it of course but I will leave that to what people think.

 

Any attempt to take out what looks like a gradient seemed to lose delicate details so I leave it as it is, conditions could have been better, but with the Moon on it's way and my battle with the gap in the tree, one has to strike whilst the iron is hot,  hope you like it.

Alan.

[Pig]

Nice one Alan, I did not realise you were into AP 😀 I can see a trussed roast chicken, but no Swan.

[alan potts]

11 minutes ago, Pig said:

Nice one Alan, I did not realise you were into AP 😀 I can see a trussed roast chicken, but no Swan.

Been doing it now seriously, well a bit seriously for about 6 months, had many setbacks and members were very helpful. Sad thing is I have a massive amount of gear now not getting used, 25 TV eyepieces for starters and an 18 inch Dob, selling stuff here is not worth the advert, anything you try and sell they immediately want to offer you half and whilst I am happy to deal with any members everything I courier is now about 30 quid.

Alan 

[Pig]

Well you seem to be doing very well for just 6 months, the image is very nice indeed 😀 with regard to the kit you have, at least you have it and it is nice gear. Folk do seem to always want to purchase for next to nothing these days !

[Stub Mandrel]

Looks nice to me. I popped a screen grab through 'gradient exterminator (using a selection excluding the nebulosity and with balance background ticked.)

I then used 'selective colour' to reduce cyan in the red channel - a tip I got from Olly.

More aggressive use of gradient exterminator, than a few runs of 'increase star colour' - some lovely blue stars appeared. Great data 🙂:

Edited July 29, 2019 by Stub Mandrel

[glowingturnip]

i think with a bit of careful stretching you should be able to get more out of it - there's structure in that patch to the left and below the swan that you could rise above the background. 

Careful with the gradient removal though, there's more red stuff below than above.

 

Can compare to mine if you like - took it a while back with a modded DSLR, looking very similar - 

 

 

[alan potts]

22 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Looks nice to me. I popped a screen grab through 'gradient exterminator (using a selection excluding the nebulosity and with balance background ticked.)

I then used 'selective colour' to reduce cyan in the red channel - a tip I got from Olly.

More aggressive use of gradient exterminator, than a few runs of 'increase star colour' - some lovely blue stars appeared. Great data 🙂:

It is amazing how the exact same data can be served up so many ways, I personally feel the bottom one you did is overdone on the star colour, though many seem to like this judging by what I have seen in the past few months of doing this type of imaging. Thought the actual data could be better as some night low down are better than others. The other night I added to M22 which was only about another 40 minutes but it actaully made the image look worse.

Alan

[alan potts]

1 hour ago, glowingturnip said:

i think with a bit of careful stretching you should be able to get more out of it - there's structure in that patch to the left and below the swan that you could rise above the background. 

Careful with the gradient removal though, there's more red stuff below than above.

 

Can compare to mine if you like - took it a while back with a modded DSLR, looking very similar - 

 

 

A stunning image of your there, did you actually shoot that from England where this barely make 20 degree above the horizon, Hopefully soon I will have a better camera an 071 from Zwo.

Alan

[Pig]

I was trying to look at the whole pattern to see the swan, but now it is now apparent that it is the white area only and it does indeed look like a swan .... silly me 😀

[glowingturnip]

23 minutes ago, alan potts said:

 did you actually shoot that from England where this barely make 20 degree above the horizon

no no, I do my imaging from Spain when I can get down there.  Very slow burn hobby for me - I probably get all the stars aligned (as it were) for me to image only about 3 times a year - in Spain, no clouds, no moon...

Mind you, got a two-weeker coming up next week, so watch this space  🙂

[alan potts]

30 minutes ago, glowingturnip said:

no no, I do my imaging from Spain when I can get down there.  Very slow burn hobby for me - I probably get all the stars aligned (as it were) for me to image only about 3 times a year - in Spain, no clouds, no moon...

Mind you, got a two-weeker coming up next week, so watch this space  🙂

I did think it was rather good, though I did get a bit of data on M55 and thats only about 19 degrees here at peak, far from brilliant though. I do get night when it is really clear low down but only about 23 in a summer, sadly one of those was the other night when the PHD2 threw a whobbler.

[glowingturnip]

I reckon I've got a very slim chance of doing the Prawn Neb one day from where we are in Spain - got about 2.5 hours from when it rises over one hillside and sets over the other (we're in a valley) and it'd be in the light dome from Malaga, but maybe one day, when I've done everything else !