First try at M81

[valleyman]

Well the clouds cleared at last so out went the gear, with plans to get M81/82.

Everything set up and aligned took my time setting the camera Caps off, Filters on. Ready to go.

Set the timer on the Camera to 20exp for 90 secs at ISO 800 and pushed GO

A few minutes later out came the first shot and there it was all as planned, Big Smile Money well spent at last..............I love a plan when it come s good. Then it happened just as the 2nd shot was being taken in rolled the clouds. Stopped the timer and waited.

5 minutes later clouds cleared so set timer again and started all over again

And in came the clouds again.

Frustration set in and pact up for the night.

As the weights came of the mount out came the stars and stayed out ...............Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Oh well maybe tonight.............here is the one effert from last night, Just did a AUTO process with PS9 on it. Maybe some of you experts can get more detail from it.

[steppenwolf]

Well caught! I have had a minor play to see if I can deal with the LP and here it is:-

[valleyman]

Wow, Thanks steve...............must admit the LP was put there by me when I played with it in PS. Would longer exposer bring out more detail

[RogerTheDodger]

Great effort there from little data

[steppenwolf]

must admit the LP was put there by me when I played with it in PS. Would longer exposer bring out more detail

The LP was there all along but 'stretching' the data will have increased its appearance too. With the amount of LP that you have, taking longer exposures would probably be counter-productive but as with so many things in astro-photography, experimentation is worthwhile so I'd be tempted to take some 2 minute or longer exposures and see what effect this has on the contrast between the galaxies and the background mush.

I find that using anything auto in PS is not really much good for our type of photography so I'd suggest that you experiment more manually. A good way to start is with the 'levels':- select the red, green and blue channels in turn and slide the left hand slider to the right until it just touches the left hand side of the histogram. This will give you a much better colour balance and have an amazing effect on the background mush - giving you a reasonable palette to work from.

[valleyman]

Thanks for the advice, will get there in about another 20 years

[valleyman]

How do you stretch a photo, can not find anything about it in PS