Big fat Pliades

[Uranium235]

Hiya,

Heres one of the targets I was working on last night, I decided to re-visit and old friend... M45. I was surprised I got so much for so little given the amount of moonlight about, some big phat diffaction spikes going on there

It was the first time i'd ised the newt for a while and I'd forgotten how long the damn thing takes to cool down properly - must have been 40min before i could achieve correct focus. Mind you, taking it from a warm house to a freezing garden would be bound to give serious tube currents for a while.

M45: The Pliades

6x360s, 5x600s

150P, 1000d, CCD CLS filter, 50mm finderguider

Thanks for looking!

[oldfruit]

That is a really nice picture, and it reminds me of the pictures i saw in astronomy books. For the record i think the diffraction spikes just add to the wonder of what must be one of many peoples favourite star clusters. So amazing what you can do with equipment today.

[James]

The Pleiades is a lovely target isn't it.

I hope you don't mind but I've downloaded your jpeg and stretched it a little just to show that there's lots more data in their that can be teased out

James

[MikeWilson]

Both the original and James' reworks are stunning and encouraging (I never thought to use longer exposures on M45 as it's such a bright object.

Do you mind me asking what ISO setting you used on your 1000D? How many darks and flats?

[Uranium235]

Do you mind me asking what ISO setting you used on your 1000D? How many darks and flats?

No problem m8, I used:

ISO800

A stock set of 10x360s and 10x600s darks (taken in the fridge, so it matched last nights temp well)

30 bias frames

15 flat frames (from the laptop screen)

Thanks for having a poke with the picture James - loads more detail to be had, I did think about stretching it that far but thats where the moonlight starts to become bit noticeable. I think i could improve it with another hour of 10min subs (if we get clear sky any time soon) and some proper flats.

[albedo0.39]

That is a really nice picture, and it reminds me of the pictures i saw in astronomy books

So very very true ! - I love both piccies .... good winters sight. Well captured

[ollypenrice]

There is a lot of faint stuff in the area so I tried a crazy seeming 10 minutes at f3.9 and it worked a treat. A few shorts for the stars maybe to calm them down later but long M45 exposures work. Give it a go!

Olly

[Deneb]

Here's a slight re-edit from James's image

Nadeem.

[Beyond_Vision]

A very nice image with plenty of signal caught. It would be worth backing off on the black point as you have clipped the fainter stuff and also resist pushing the blue channel too much. With the colour balance right you should end up with some golden coloured stars running through the cluster

Regards

Kevin

[Uranium235]

Here's a slight re-edit from James's image

Nadeem.

Cor.. thats a good one! Seems I got a lot more than I first thought - thanks for that one Nadeem!

Hi Kevin, I havent really touched the channels on this one (yet), it was just a straight calib & stack in maxim. So if I go back, calibrate the frames again, but when i go to "convert colour" - will a 20% reduction in the blue channel scaling do the trick?

Its a case of "suck it and see" I guess

Will report back if I get something worthy of posting, cheers!

[Beyond_Vision]

I use DSS for stacking so not sure about Maxim. Do you adjust the black levels of the RGB with anything after stacking?

[Uranium235]

The only software I use after maxim is paint shop pro (yeah, i know), but its all ive got There is a histogram function I often use, as well as for some saturation, sharpening and noise removal tools. The only problem is that it only works on 16bit TIFF images that need to be pre-stretched before it will accept them as a valid file.

I did give it another go last night and managed to get some other colours coming through, but im not happy with it. Im nowhere near Nadeems version yet! If its clear this weekend I will try to add more data.

[wbm156]

A very nice image

[MikeWilson]

Uranium, try the curves tool in paint.net. It's free and seems as capable as Photoshop.