M81-2

[Shibby]

Here's my Bode's Nebula.

36 x 4m unguided, ISO 800, D70 (unmodded)

To be honest, I was hoping for a bit more for the amount of time spent. Not sure what to blame, there was a lot of sky background but it may be my processing techniques that are the problem!

I'm very pleased with the performance of my new coma corrector though, this is my first image with it and it's working a treat.

Reprocess:

[ashworthacca]

That looks great to me, thanks for sharing.

[peter shah]

looks good to me.....great star colour and very natural processing....a little bit of amp glow in the lower left corner...nothing that PS gradient tool cant sort out

[noakesy]

stunning good clear picture and lovely colour well done

[namreg]

Nice one Lewis. You've got more colour in yours - mine looked a bit monochromatic for some reason. The amp glow of course is the trademark of the D70 - adds character!

[prokyon]

Very nice, the galaxies are great! But you have to do something with the background. Did you make flats and darks?

Cheers

Werner

[Shibby]

Thanks guys.

Werner, yeah I took flats and darks... Might have another go at the processing, the background looked ok until I saved as jpeg.

[Shibby]

Here's a reprocess:

[namreg]

That's good mate.

[Deneb]

Another Unguided Fine shot Lewis....

I must admit ! I do miss the unguided work, I must do some again.

Nadeem.

[Zakalwe]

4 minutes unguided:icon_salut:

The re-processed shot is lovely. Great image.

[namreg]

D'ya know Lewis, I could probably do 4 minutes on my rig. There'd be loadsa tracking errors of course, but you wouldn't be able to see them cos all the subs would be white!

[Deneb]

...But you've got some data to play with, it's still there - look:

Cheers

Nadeem

[ollypenrice]

Incredibly good stars for unguided. Well, good stars full stop.

The signal isn't strong, I agree, but I think you have hit the noise limit myself. Good colour.

PixInsight is great for the background sky, by the way.

There are ways to soothe the background sky in PS though. Use the colour select tool to select it and then lower saturation and contrast. Not subtle but if done cautiously it does work to some extent.

Olly

[Shibby]

Thanks for the comments!

...But you've got some data to play with, it's still there - look

You're right, there is some extra fuzziness there, but I don't think there's anything useful; the problem is I find the fainter stuff is *only just* brighter than the background, so when I try and work it out it looks incredibly noisy. So I think I prefer to keep that stuff faint so you can still see it (at least, on my monitor anyway) but without the noise. However, with better removal of the sky background I might be able to pull out more....

Incredibly good stars for unguided. Well, good stars full stop.

The signal isn't strong, I agree, but I think you have hit the noise limit myself. Good colour.

PixInsight is great for the background sky, by the way.

There are ways to soothe the background sky in PS though. Use the colour select tool to select it and then lower saturation and contrast. Not subtle but if done cautiously it does work to some extent.

Thanks Olly, I will have to try those techniques; trial version of PixInsight downloading...

When you say noise limit, do you mean of the camera? It feels as though the sky is limiting me at the moment (oddly, not the mount!) It was slightly cloudy with a bright moon that night I suppose...

D'ya know Lewis, I could probably do 4 minutes on my rig. There'd be loadsa tracking errors of course, but you wouldn't be able to see them cos all the subs would be white!

Perhaps 4 mins was overkill this time! You captured just as much as I did with your 2min exposures.

As for the tracking, I think I really lucked out with this mount! I believe it was MartinB who originally recommended I look for one of these second-hand; so thanks Martin!

[namreg]

You captured just as much as I did with your 2min exposures

1 minute mate!