First Successful Attempt - Heart Nebula

[agthomson]

So, after many frustrating nights, all caused by me inadvertedly chaning a setting or two in SharpCap, I finally have something that's actually usable from a session with my Dual Narrowband L-eNhance filter.

This was 22 x 4 min exposures taken on a WO ZS61 with an L-eNhance dual narrowband filter using an ASI294MC Pro at 200 gain. Mount is an HEQ5, guided in PHD2. Images were stacked in DSS using recommended settings, apart from the 10 Dark frames that were shot and stacked in SharpCap, with the stacked Dark image added to DSS as a master Dark. This did a great job of removing the amp glow.

Only processing was individual channel levels to balance/align them, a quick stretch and a minor adjustment to curves.

 

Self-critique: I messed up the framing a bit, so lost IC 1795 from the bottom (or top?) of the heart. I'm also terrible at processing in Photoshop, so there are colour balance sisues. I'm still working out the best way to process images taken with this filter! Focus looks okay to me, but maybe a little soft?

Next steps? I want to up the exposure time a bit to maybe 5 or 6 minutes while still leaving the gain at 200. I'll then reduce the gain from there if necessary, but this filter seems to need all the time and gain it can get. the 294MC Pro works quite well at high gains anyway.

Any pointers? Better processing tips?

[MarkAR]

Pretty good, I think more exposure time will be a benefit.

[des anderson]

For a first attempt, I would be very proud of the result. A big thumbs up. Des