M81 & M82, 1h 55m C80-ED

[sgazer]

hi,

here's my attemp at M81 and M82 from the weekend before last. It was a bit of a murky night with poor seeing and I was struggling to get any real detail or colour until I received some tips for DSS settings (thanks to Uranium235), so here's the result.

C-80ED, mod'd 1000d, HEQ5, ST80/Mintron guided with guidemaster, 23x5min subs, ISO1600, darks and flats, cropped image.

[Coco]

That a fantastic image!

It looks super..

Cheers Guy...

[Darth Takahashi]

Any chance of sharing the tips?

Great image by the way.

[sgazer]

of course; the biggest difference I found was checking the 'set black point to zero' box. For some reason, is seems to bring more colours out in the final image. Also, not selecting any white balance settings (I was doing auto), not aligning RGB in the final image and selecting background calibration. Also upping the saturation to 20-30%. In the past I've performed all the changing in Photoshop, but now I'm getting better results if I do these initial stages in DSS.

Also I never knew that you could select part of the image in DSS to work on (saves applying changes to the whole image which takes a while) and also you can zoom in using the mouse thumb wheel.

[Psychobilly]

Very nice possibly a little bit too green but really nice data to work with

Peter...

[russ]

Another great image sgazer!

Love the colours in M82!

[sgazer]

thanks for you comments. Looking at it on another monitor, I can see the green you mention. My laptop screen seems to show less green, red and noise than my work PC. I can never get them to match!

[sgazer]

ps, the tips I mentioned above, didn't work as well on another image of M106, where switching WB on brought out more colour . Seems there's no hard and fast settings to use.

[Psychobilly]

Monitor Calibrations is a whole new can of worms...

If your using PS/CS use f8 to bring up the "info" tab and keep and eye of the RGB values displayed as you move around the background...

Nice to see that someone have been able to get out and capture some new data...

Peter...

[TakMan]

Great capture: tight round stars, detail and colour - though a tad green as already mentioned!

Still struggling too with how images look on my calibrated monitor at home and then how they appear when uploaded here..?

Clear skies....

Damian

[dc509]

really useful tips here - and a great image

[Beyond_Vision]

A good result Sgazers but I would only recommend increasing the saturation to around 17 to 19% or so otherwise you will get too much chrominance noise.

Take a look at this link for an alternative colour enchancement technique

Stargazer - A Private Observatory In The Heart Of Europe

Regards

Kevin

[sgazer]

thank you for all your encouraging comments, and the link Kevin, I'll have a read through it.

Here's a version with the green reduced a bit, it was only about 5 levels above the other channels in the background, but quite obvious on my othe rmonitor.

[greenkat]

Great images & I might try those tips as I struggle with DSS and what settings to use.

Cheers

[sgazer]

had a bit of a play with PS based on Riklaunim's link to; astrogaleria.com.pl

created a duplicate layer, with the blend set to colour, then applied curves in this duplicate layer. It brings out some interesting colours. Not sure if they are realistic, but it emphasises certain parts of the galaxy.

[ollypenrice]

I think that is real enough. I got a similar look when shooting it at around a metre. Great detail in there and another feather for the mighty ED80's cap. Why have they discontinued it??

Olly

[RobH]

Nice result for what is not a lot of imaging time.

Cheers

Rob

[sgazer]

and to think at first I thought it was a wasted murky night! Just shows how important the post processing is!