M81 with 200mm newt

[Trevor N]

Taken on Tuesday night with a 200mm newt at prime focus using an atik 314L . Moonlight was a pain but it's the most detail I've ever achieved, Regards , Trevor

[greenkat]

Nice image Trevor

Quick question, what make newt is it? i'm thinking of upgrading from a 150mm f6 to 200mm , but not sure weather to get skywatcher or spend a bit more and go for the Orion optics with hilux coating

Cheers

Greenkat

[Trevorw]

Trevor

Nice one well done I had a play with the colour balance and shadows etc in CS3, hope you don't mind

Cheers

Trevor

[Luke]

Nice one, Trevor!

[Starflyer]

That's a lovely image Trevor, great detail and nice gentle processing.

[Roy Batty]

I like that alot Trevor, very smooth. Perhaps a tad less green in your levels?

Keith

[Trevor N]

Thanks for the comments. I know you can callibrate monitors but they are so different when colour is concerned. My works monitor is completely diferent from home.

The telescope is an off the shelf skywatcher 200mm explorer. Once you achieve a certain level I find the improvements by spending far more money are very limited. It seems very much a law of diminishing returns to me but I'm sure others would not agree. I've had many SW items over the years and though they may not be top of the range I have always found them very acceptable.

Regards , Trevor

[barkis]

A very nice job TN. You have to be very pleased with this, it is a lovely shot.

Ron.

[Starflyer]

I couldn't resist a tinker too, hope you don't mind.

Cheers,

Ian

[Trevor N]

Like that one Ian , What did you do . Just pull the green back a bit or more than that ?,Thanks , Trevor

[Starflyer]

I used the colour balance tool to reduce the green in the shadows and midtones, then it went too red, so I upped the blue and dropped the red a tad. I just kept tinkering with the colour balance until it looked sort of right.

I'm trying to get my head around colour calibration at the moment so that I can produce repeatable colours. I just bought a Spyder2 monitor calibration gizmo but haven't gone through the procedure yet - I'll let you know how I get on with it if you want.

The Skywatcher 'scopes are very good and I think you'd have to spend a fair bit to notice any difference. Spend more time on practising your processing, maybe buy a book or two; Photoshop Astronomy by R. Scott Ireland is excellent (IMHO), but quite heavy going and not cheap. Flats and Bias frames will make a huge difference if you're not using them already.

Sorry to waffle on - it's a cracking image at the end of the day

[WebSentinel]

Really nice image Trevor!

What where the times and f-ratio for that (if you don't mind me asking)?

P.S. I think I prefer the original over the other two re-works (sorry to the chaps that have contributed).

[Trevor N]

Thanks to all for the comments. In answer to Steve the image was taken at prime focus . A 200mm scope at f5. The exposures were 12 x 4 mins. I did try a test 6 min exposure but the moonlight was starting to washout the image. Regards, Trevor