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M51

Imahumanbeing

By Imahumanbeing
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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Imahumanbeing

Imahumanbeing

Posted
Posted

Hello everyone.

I went out last night and tried to get some of M51, the Moon was full and there were high clouds but they went and I managed to get around 2.5 hours of 15 secs at ISO 1600 with about 10 mins of them at 20 secs, stacked them in DSS and ended up with around 1 hour 25 mins of Lights with 30 Darks. I saw loads of satellites while I was out. I have adjusted the RGB levels, brightness/contrast and saturation a bit as well as cropping the image. I am very happy with it! I will have more of a play with the processing and will try imaging it again when there is no moon.

Canon 1000D - C80ED - Nexstar SLT GT

Cheers

Jamie

IMG_M510001.jpg

post-15495-133877365631_thumb.jpg

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Imahumanbeing

Imahumanbeing

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Thanks very much everyone!

Even though its no way near as good as the M51 images put on here it is a big step for me, these are the kind of picture's I have been looking forward to getting! I have had another bash at processing it in GIMP and its a bit clearer now but I will keep trying to make it better. When there is no moon I will have another go at M51 again.

Cheers!

Jamie

IMG_M51SGL0001.jpg

post-15495-133877365684_thumb.jpg

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Aza

Aza

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If you are after a bit of constructive criticism...the image is rather green, so I would adjust the colour balance. Also flats would make a large difference for you.

This is the lightbox I made:

Light Box

I have next to no craft type skills, but managed to pull this off :)

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Tim

Tim

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Nice shot Jamie, you did well to get anything with that moon! I dont bother on really moony nights anymore. As the others have said, all the ingredients are in place for a great image.

As Aza suggests, learning to take and use flat frames, and also bias frames, will make a massive difference to these images. Not only will it get rid of the vignetting effects, but also get rid of the 'dust bunny' marks that come from a dusty sensor. Flat files also help with contrast in the image and ensure you can bring out the most details. Aim to take about 25 per session.

I would say from your pic that there is one frame in there that has a trail on it, the brighter stars are exhibiting a 'tail'. You wont lose much by removing that frame, apart from the trail.

Looking forward to many more of your images!

Cheers

TJ

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Imahumanbeing

Imahumanbeing

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Thanks very much for the help and comments!

Aza - I will turn the green down a bit and your light box looks great, thanks for the link.

TJ - Thanks for all the advice and I will try a restack after looking for the image with the star trails in. I put all I got straight into DSS, I had quite a lot to stack and hoped DSS would get rid of the ones with trailing in!

Thanks John and thanks for all the advice and help you have given me.

Cheers

Jamie

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Imahumanbeing

Imahumanbeing

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Thanks very much Peter.

TJ also recommended PixinsightLE and the DBE on my Cassiopeia widefield, I downloaded it and the DBE worked great but I can't seem to get it right now, I either get no result or the image is too dark after using the DBE so I need to have a good read and see what I am doing wrong.

I restacked my M51 picture and got rid of the trails but I'm not happy with my processing so I'll keep trying. I have posted the TIFF if you or anyone fancies a go at it.

Cheers

Jamie

IMG_M51STK20001.tif

IMG_M51STK20001.tif

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

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Hi Jamie,

As its a widefield shot you really need the full tres tiff to work with as the galaxies are already quite pixelated... when processing you want to maintain the resolution and bit depth all the way through and then create a smaller lower bit depth copy of image for posting.

Since you have stacked alt/az subs you get artefacts around the edege of the image due to the rotation between frames.

I have found that these "confuse" gradientxterminator and possibly do the same to the DBE algorithms in Pixinsight. I would crop of the edges before trying to run DBE again.

Peter....

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Imahumanbeing

Imahumanbeing

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Thanks Peter.

I tried cropping the image first and then running DBE but still couldn't get it right. I didn't know if I had the settings too harsh as the result of the DBE would be all black or no effect at all, I tried different settings to get the right balance but nothing has worked yet so I will have to have a read to see if I am doing something wrong or if there is anything else I can do.

Thanks a lot for the help.

Jamie

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Imahumanbeing

Imahumanbeing

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I restacked after finding the lights with trails in and managed to get a result using the DBE but I haven't been happy with the results after further processing. I went out last night and tried again, without the full moon, got around 2 hours of 15 sec lights at ISO 1600 and 30 Darks. I had to delete a lot due to tracking errors and the slight breeze, also there was loads of satellites about and I got a few trails from them too so I ended up with around 40 minutes of lights!:) I tried taking Flats using the white screen on the laptop while using the program notepad but stacking them made the image noisier so I will try again.

Cheers

Jamie

IMG_SGL0001.jpg

post-15495-13387736707_thumb.jpg

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jgs001

jgs001

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Looking very good Jamie. If you've got that number of subs, put the images with satellites back in and use a Sigma Clip stacking algorithm... (you'll need to check the real name in DSS, sorry I don't recall) it'll remove the satellites and still stack the data.

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