M 63

[roundycat]

here is an M 63 that I did over the last few nights. Poor seeing a lot of the time and the gusty wind didn't help the LX200. Pre-processed in Maxim and much work done in PS. LX200, TV 0.8 reducer, ST10 and AP1200. Ten minute subs for a total of 420m.

Dennis

[barkis]

Worth every minute of the seven hours. Details are good, and stretching way out to the extremities.

The LX200 is a wind catcher, so you had a battle there.

Ron.

[ollypenrice]

Wow, blistering galaxy. For my taste I might be inclined to soften the field stars a tad but that is quite a picture, very exciting. Hats off!

Olly

[roundycat]

Olly, that is definitely a good idea! I spent so long battling with shrinking the stars, individually and as a group as well as sharpening them as they were very blurry looking that I lost sight of the war. The smaller stars could do with being made bigger by a slight blur.

Dennis

[FranckiM06]

Hi Dennis,

You have beautiful image of this galaxy but how you do to get the stars very well round ? Because I mind that you have very good mount (AP1200) and the error is very low so, maybe you meet some problem's with your guide scope and camera or when you have additionned yours images from the few nights, it was not very well adjusted ! I'm just surprised about the stars that should be very round with your mount !!!

Franck

[ollypenrice]

I think it comes from the star reduction that Dennis talks about. I mean there's always the old star rounder action you can write. Magic wand- select star- expand - feather - radial blur - deselect. Of course I wouldn't do that. Who me? Never!

Olly

[roundycat]

Franck, if I understand you correctly there are three reasons why the stars are imperfect. 1) I guide with a separate guide scope. 2) My LX200 is in need of servicing and it will get it when it comes off the mount tomorrow and 3) The LX never seems to give me round stars around the edge of an image.

When I do star reduction I use a Minimum filter set to 1 and a 40% fade. I may do it on a star layer in which case the layer is made using Image-Adjust-Threshold and Magic Wand then usually expand 3 and feather 1. This routine never lets the reduction show as diamond shaped stars. For the big stars I go to 8bit and use Filter-Distort-Pinch and set it to 50-100%. I select the stars for this using quick mask and feather the selection by 12% of the brush size.

Dennis