some wido's - auriga and pleiades

[Steve1976]

Here's my first real attempts at widefield. Just camera on tripod and stacked in DSS. Any tips most appreciated by this beginner.

For some reason DSS did some pre-ordained stretch on the pleiades shot - any ideas as to how to stop it doing that?

How to get more colour into these shots successfully?

[saturn5]

Like the Auriga shot,lots of interesting detail and starfields.

You can boost the vibrancy/saturation in PS to add more colour to the shot.

There is also software called Starspikes Pro which does wonderful things with stars

including increasing their colour.Its available as a PS plug in at $60.

Heres what your shot looks like after the above adjustments just to let you see what colour can be

brought out of the shot.A bit of Magenta creeping into the stars so could probably reduce that a little

but it gives you a general idea of what can be done.

[Psychobilly]

The images straight out of DSS always tend to be really unsaturated... as S5 has shown colour can be brought out in the post processing...

You can boost it in DSS after the stacking process has finished and you can also "manipulate" the image in there as well...

Start up DSS pop up the help files and have a look at the section on the "processing tab"... theres plenty more to come out of the data ... nicely captured for a static tripod shot

Billy...

[Sierra Golf Mike]

Great detail, what camera settings did you use and how many did you stack. My efforts to date have been poor in comparison to yours. Well done!

[Steve1976]

Thanks a lot for the help. Sat5 I love what you did to it!!! I've got the new version of PS just don't know how to use it yet! Going to give it another go asap

Steve - it was about 20 or so with 6 darks. 8 second exposures at F2.8 on the nifty-fifty. Used the Canon 550D.

[JamesF]

It never ceases to amaze me just how many stars there are out there. It's ok to say "oh, there are x billion stars in the Milky Way", but that really doesn't mean anything on a human scale. Looking at the Auriga photo really brings it home. I struggled to even pick out Auriga until Stewart had brought the colours out a bit (and I think you can pick out M36, M37 and M38 now, too?).

James

[Psychobilly]

Steve,

If you have a photo processing app that can work with 16 bit/channel or higher then use that to do the processing... if not it might be better to do "more" of the initial tweaking in DSS...

I usually give a small tweak to the saturation in DSS and sometimes change the stretch function depending on the target... just make sure you dont clip the data in DSS... or i n the post processign for that mater... once you have clipped it theres no getting it back (ok you can undo...)

Billy...

[dlp]

Nice Auriga widefield!

In PS, create a 'Vibrance' adjustment layer, then up the vibrance & saturation. You may then need to reduce the magenta in Image/Adjustments/Color balance. You can also selectively adjust star saturation etc using the individual tools using an appropriate sized brush.

Blacks are very clipped, particularly in the M45 shot - did DSS do that? Not a DSS user, but you need to get to the bottom of that!

David

[Cloudwatcher]

It never ceases to amaze me just how many stars there are out there...................

James

Me too.

In addition to the three Messier clusters the Flaming Star (IC405) and 'The Kids' can be clearly picked out.......... sure there are a lot more less well known objects to be found.

[stevedodkins]

Excellent, i love the auriga widefield. what ISO did you use?

Steve

[Steve1976]

All this advice is just fantastic thanks guys, such a big help.

Steve the ISO was 800

[Steve1976]

I'm trying to add a bit of colour via PS just to capella so I'm selecting the brush tool and then a yellowy colour via Colour Picker but when I actually try to brush it in nothing happens. The cursor is a crosshair and it changes when i hold the shift key down but still nothing. Any ideas chaps?

[dlp]

If you're editing the autosave.tiff it's probably still in 32 bit mode and only a few tools work in this mode (levels etc). Convert to 16bit under Image/Mode. You may even need to go to 8bit.

David

[Steve1976]

Thanks David that was it!

[NGEddie]

Thank you - pictures like this show what can been done with just a DSLR.

[MaCross]

Very nice! I am startig to experiment with DSS now too and it can be really hard...