M57 First Attempt Unguided

[Serotonin]

9/04/2010 SCG 9.25" unguided. 14X25s at 400-ISO. Canon Digital Rebel DSLR.

DSS. Photoshop CS2

My first attempt at M57. Also my second DSO after M31. I'm hooked! Polar alignment not perfect. Some drift.

[Deneb]

Thats a very good result for unguided. with better polar alignment, you can unguide for longer also have a try using ISO800..

Nadeem.

[Bizibilder]

Very nice

[Revs]

That's a whole load better than I've managed. Very good

[Serotonin]

Thanks everyone! It was awesome weather last night. No humidity and no clouds. We had a hurricane off the coast of NC late Thursday that seems to have sucked all the humidity away.

Polar alignment continues to be a problem for me but I'm getting better at it. (drift method).

[Darth Takahashi]

Better than you think;

I hope you don't mind but I had a little play with it to remove the red cast in the background.

The step are as follows in Photoshop;

1. Dup layer

2. Noise-> Dust & Scratches to remove the stars

3. Clone stamp to remove the ring

4. Set as a difference layer and there you go

5. Adjust to taste...

[p1taylor]

very good for first unguided keap it up.

peter

[simon84]

Excellent image, well done. I'm going unguided aswell at the moment. Sure is alot of fun. Looking forward to seeing some more.

[Serotonin]

Thanks everyone! I'm learning a lot here. I finally figured out what Neil meant above. LOL.

I played around with Photoshop and I was able to remove the light pollution as Neil described above.

Thanks all!

[Cloudwatcher]

If you want to bring out the detail in the 'ring',which actually is pretty good, play with the Hue/Saturation and sharpen tools in PS.

Here's a quick example........ looks better on a larger scale,honest.

[adamsp123]

Good start and it will only get better, with the odd upset of course but you are dealing with the dark arts.

[mark7331]

Brilliant start! Well done. Very impressive for unguided.