Wide M51

[samtheeagle]

At long last I got a clear night that didn't have an early morning chasing after it! So I got my kit set up and had a pop at M51, which I had never attempted before. All in all I'm quite pleased with the results, considering it's only an hour and 15 minutes worth of data. As an added bonus the autoguiding behaved itself for the vast majority of the time, so all in all a very satisfying imaging session.

The image is made up of 25 X 180 second subs @ ISO 800, darks and flats applied. I then did the usual basic processing in Photoshop, but nothing elaborate. I used the C102 and my modified Canon 350D. Not going to win any prizes, but it's another step in my progression I think, and it's always good to get a new target onto the CCD

[pvaz]

Great image!

I had nothing to do so I decided to have a little play with it in PS. Hope you don't mind.

Edit:

Used the highlights / shadows function to darken the back ground.

Then duplicated the layers twice, left the bg layer untouched then used Color dodge with 30% transparency on the 1st layer and overlay at 60% transparency on the 2nd.

[samtheeagle]

No Paulo, I don't mind at all! My personal preference is to shy away from trying to get the background totally black. I think pushing it too far can clip out the fine details, and lead to a somewhat artificial look. But opinions vary of course Thanks for your comments.

[pvaz]

I'm just an observer so don't mind me much. I just had nothing to do so I decided to have some fun and see how does this processing stuff works.

PS-> Maybe I wanted the background darker because from my backyard I don't have light pollution and the sky is really dark, much darker then the image you posted.

[samtheeagle]

Yeah, that image was taken from my garden in the town centre, so I suffer from A LOT of LP

And I find the processing very interesting too. It's certainly a great way to spend some time during the day / cloudy periods

I tried to get some more data for the image last night, and had a nightmare I either had my camera incorrectly deciding that the battery as flat, which it most certainly was not as it's running off a big lead acid battery, or the guiding just took off in a random direction. I got another seven 3 minute subs for several hour effort. DOH! >< I'm not sure it's really given me much more to work with.