M63.

[bob-c]

Hi all, my 1st attempt at this galaxy, just over 12 hrs imaging time in 300s subs. I still have a lot to learn though.[This old head is slow].

OOUK ODK12"...A A 294C Protec OSC... Ioptron Cem120ec..Thanks for looking,

Bob.

Edited April 27, 2020 by bob-c

[Toxophilus]

Nice image Bob!  This is one target that I need to revisit at some point. My last attempt was a few years back now.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Toxophilus

[bob-c]

2 hours ago, Toxophilus said:

Nice image Bob!  This is one target that I need to revisit at some point. My last attempt was a few years back now.

Hi Mark, nice to here from you and i hope you are keeping well.Thanks for your kind comment ,it gives me incentive mate .Hope to see you and John at the next show when all is well.  

Take care,

Bob.

[x6gas]

Nice capture!  It looks like you may have a slight tracking error or some tilt in your image train.  What did you use to process the data?

[bob-c]

4 hours ago, x6gas said:

Nice capture!  It looks like you may have a slight tracking error or some tilt in your image train.  What did you use to process the data?

Hi x6gas, thank you for your comments on my pic. To process the data i used APP to stack and do some processing, then final adjustments in Photoshop. I must add that i have only had APP recently and just used default settings. And that my processing skills are limited, finding it all hard to understand with my old head.

As for tracking and tilt, i don't realy know. The imaging was done over three nights from the 19th, with two that where windy with gusts up to 23mph at times. PHD 2 says that i have some backlash in deck. 

Bob.

[assouptro]

Hi

Thanks for sharing 

This is one of my favorite galaxies, I haven't imaged this for about 8 years when I was using an old canon 350d (no live view, oh the fun!)

Anyway, I hope you don't mind but I have recently been playing with a program called Topaz DeNoise AI  and I am finding it useful.

I saved your image, threw it in and tweaked a couple of sliders. and reduced some of the noise in it 

I'm not saying it's a huge improvement but it can be a useful tool to play with at different parts of the process.

Thanks again for sharing 

Bryan 

Edited April 28, 2020 by assouptro

[bob-c]

Hi  Bryan, thanks for looking and having a play with my image.I can see that you have managed to rid more of the noise and smooth it out more. I will have a look at that software, I have a lot to learn. Thanks once again for your input on this, it all helps.

Bob.

[geoflewis]

12 hours ago, assouptro said:

Hi

Thanks for sharing 

This is one of my favorite galaxies, I haven't imaged this for about 8 years when I was using an old canon 350d (no live view, oh the fun!)

Anyway, I hope you don't mind but I have recently been playing with a program called Topaz DeNoise AI  and I am finding it useful.

I saved your image, threw it in and tweaked a couple of sliders. and reduced some of the noise in it 

I'm not saying it's a huge improvement but it can be a useful tool to play with at different parts of the process.

Thanks again for sharing 

Bryan 

Hi Bob and Bryan,

First that's a really nice image of The Sunflower Bob, lovely details and colour.

FWIW I also just started playing with Topaz and so far have been very impressed. I already knew that several top planetary imagers such as Christopher Go highly recommend it and my friend and planetary imaging mentor, David Tyler, has been using is for a variety of images, not only astro but including nature images such as birds and macro images of flowers and insects. He ran a jpeg of my recent M51 image through it to show what was possible, so I downloaded the trial a couple of days ago. I used it on the full Tiff image of M51 and it really cleaned up the background and added a tad of sharpening to some of the spiral features. I thought that the split screen feature with the vertical slider was pretty cool, allowing a side by side comparison across different regions of the image so that I could tune the adjustments to taste before saving.

[bob-c]

 Hi Geof, thank you for your nice comments and advice on my pic, it is all very helpful.

Bob.

[x6gas]

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Hi Bob and Bryan,

First that's a really nice image of The Sunflower Bob, lovely details and colour.

FWIW I also just started playing with Topaz and so far have been very impressed. I already knew that several top planetary imagers such as Christopher Go highly recommend it and my friend and planetary imaging mentor, David Tyler, has been using is for a variety of images, not only astro but including nature images such as birds and macro images of flowers and insects. He ran a jpeg of my recent M51 image through it to show what was possible, so I downloaded the trial a couple of days ago. I used it on the full Tiff image of M51 and it really cleaned up the background and added a tad of sharpening to some of the spiral features. I thought that the split screen feature with the vertical slider was pretty cool, allowing a side by side comparison across different regions of the image so that I could tune the adjustments to taste before saving.

Thanks Bryan and Geof for bringing DeNoise AI to my attention.  80 bucks is quite a price tag for a one-trick pony but at least there is an evaluation version... 

[geoflewis]

11 minutes ago, x6gas said:

Thanks Bryan and Geof for bringing DeNoise AI to my attention.  80 bucks is quite a price tag for a one-trick pony but at least there is an evaluation version... 

I've thought the same, not only about Topaz Denoise, but also about Registar, which is another one trick pony. I put off buying Registar for about 4 years and now realise that was a huge mistake, as it may be one trick, but what a trick. Topaz may fall into the same category, so I'll probably purchase it, but for now I just downloaded the trial to evaluate it.

Edited April 29, 2020 by geoflewis

[x6gas]

Yeah I followed the same path with Registar, though in honesty I only use it in special cases now...