My very first DSO image

[Damien]

Hi All,

Very excited about last nights imaging session, my first time ever doing prime focus imaging.

I spent some time getting the best polar alingment I could and took 10 x 30 second exposures at ISO 1600 and 10 darks taken imediatley after. Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop CS2.

Shame the central core is clipped, commets and critique welcome

Regards

Damien

[ollypenrice]

Very good start. To get the Trapezium resolved you need to layer mask in some very short exposures. This is the best method of which I'm aware.

Compositing 2 Different Exposures via Layer Masks

Keep at it!

Olly

ollypenrice's Photos

[blinky]

Great first image Damien! As Olly has pointed out you should be able to recover the burnt out core by following the guide he provided the link for.

[Damien]

Thanks Guys,

Great link, I will give that a go and see if I can rescue it. It's cloudy for a few days so that will keep me occupied.

Damien

[Starflyer]

Great result for a first image, much better than all of my early attempts, I'm looking forward to seeing the re-process.

[Demonperformer]

Much better than my first dso image ... well done

[LunarLight]

awesome first image! and thats a very useful tutorial on image masking to!

[oldfruit]

Great first attempt.

[Quatermass]

Nice and sharp for a first image looking good well done. I was out there in December at minus 5 doing the same thing. Its great fun seeing the image develop. Your going to be using photoshop a lot heres a good link to a nice tutorial for you.

http://sharmaastronet.ipage.com/PS1.pdf

[Bizibilder]

Nice one Damien! A very good first image - the 200P and HEQ5 is a good combination.

[Damien]

Thank you guys for all you help, I've re-processedd the image with the help of the tutorials and am pleased with the result overall. There is still a alot of noise in the image as a result of the high ISO but for my first image i can't expect too much.

Looking forward to getting out again for another crack at it.

Thanks again for all your help. Any comments on the re-processed image would be gratefully appreciated.

Damien

[Quatermass]

Looking very nice, hope the skies stay nice and clear for you.

[Damien]

Thanks Quatermass, You tutorial helped alot. Would like the image to have a bit more punch but it's only a 4 minute exposure at a very high ISO so more data required.

Hope the skies are clear for you too.

Thanks Again

D

[kentronix]

I have to say that looks great for a first image. Great to see the improvement after reprocessing too. If my first dso pic is half as good as that I will be chuffed.

[Quatermass]

Thanks Quatermass, You tutorial helped alot. Would like the image to have a bit more punch but it's only a 4 minute exposure at a very high ISO so more data required.

Hope the skies are clear for you too.

Thanks Again

D

I got out there at 3am last night to see Saturn again so I am going to have a crack at that but I recall being out there in the freezing cold imaging the Orion Nebula there is just a wealth of amazing things to see out there I wish I had taken this hobby up years ago. If you haven't seen Saturn yet do stay up later and get a look at it amazing. If I find any more photoshop tuts ont the net I will post them to you.

might be a cool thread to start on its own Photoshop tutorials on astrophotography

[Damien]

The first thing i ever saw in a scope was Saturn. I'll never forget it. Great Idea on the photoshop tutorials. I would love to see some on Youtube. A Video is always better..well for me anyway.

[Quatermass]

I will start a thread on it called Photoshop astrophotography tutorials for us.. Me too I love watching a video tutorial so much easier to understand as I am dyslexic find it much better.

[crabbiT Scot]

If my 1st DSO attempt comes out looking like that, I'll be well chuffed!

Nice image mate

[planetdnb]

Great first attempt!

[Coco]

great job, the second image is much better... just need to fine tune..

M42 is a bit of a trial and see, your temted to want to see an image immediately in the camera LCD... so its easy to over push the exposure...

I'd be tempted to drop the ISO to 800 and stretch the image in curves after stacking, take 3 sets of exposures 15 secs , 30sec's & maybe 45-60.

Good start anyway

[Damien]

Cheers Coco,

Will give that a try next chance I get. More signal and less noise seems to be the way forward. As I am not guiding I can't expose much beyond 2 minutes but getting a good clean signal with less noise is what i'm going to try and achieve.

Thanks again

D