Winter favourites

John O'Mahony · Post by **John O'Mahony** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:12 am

Here are a few shots that I managed to take last night. Boy was it cold. My camera battery started to pack in before I could get more frames. I have only crudely processed the images at this point. All were taken with a WO Megrez 72and unmodded Canon 450D on a CGE without guiding.

M45
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2682/425 ... a0bc_b.jpg

M42
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4015/425 ... 0b51_b.jpg

Flame and horsehead
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4050/425 ... 9043_b.jpg

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:57 am

Wow John, those are very nice shots indeed, can you bring in what you captured to the club meeting next week and do a very quick 5 mins on them, they are worth sharing !

John O'Mahony · Post by **John O'Mahony** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 12:17 pm

Sure. They are not properly processed- levels and curves only in Gimp but the raw data looks good. These jpegs don't do it justice

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:33 pm

Grand unprocessed winter set there John.
What kind of numbers of lights, darks, flats etc are you running
with those?
Did you use the CLS filter.
I suspect it's use on M42.

Bringing them into the next meeting to show them to the members is
a great idea.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:37 pm

Actually,
just thinking and
Not trying to steal your thunder in anyway,
I've a few shots of Mars / Saturn & the Eclipse
form this current apparition that I'll bring in also.

If you want to email me the 3 finished shots of yours if you
have them by next week I can put them all on a USB stick...

John O'Mahony · Post by **John O'Mahony** » Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:10 pm

I managed to get out in the cold last night and take some more shots. The fog rolled in before I could take some extra horsehead shots

Rosette nebula

17 x 5 minute subs. Megrez 72 Canon 450D (unmodded). Darks (6) and flats (10) taken. Fog rolled in at frame 18 !! No autoguiding used.

farm5.static.flickr.com/4063/4259119838_b60e0442a5_b.jpg

Pleiades M45
I decided to reshoot this one using longer frames. This is a composite based on 9 x 5 minute subs with flats and darks taken using the same set up. I am using a Skywatcher field flattener which is non reducing (flattens only- does quite a good job for Â£60)

farm3.static.flickr.com/2779/4257441935_0a91985cc2_b.jpg

This is all the processing I can do as I only have DSS and Gimp

John O'Mahony · Post by **John O'Mahony** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 2:42 pm

I did some processing in PS to see what I could do. I have reprocessed M45 and the Rosette using a mask subtraction and Gaussian blur to try and remove some of the background noise and graininess. See what you think......

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2693/428 ... 2e43_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4004/428 ... 0c32_b.jpg

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 7:48 pm

Very good John.
It's getting better.
I'll be in PJ Matthews on Wednesday and I'll bring in
the CD book I was talking about for you.

On the first one,
I'd say you could push the reds slightly to give it more
emphasis.
I'd also be careful with gasus blur...
try to avoid it if pos.

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 8:31 pm

Definitely push the reds alot more for the resette nebula, its would be alot better, its background looks a little green (not black anyway) to me also.
The pleiades one looks good!.

John O'Mahony · Post by **John O'Mahony** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 2:02 pm

Jeez,.... I really need to get a proper monitor, I can't see the green colour at all

Thanks for the loan of the book and CD Frank. I'll pop into Pj's on Wednesday afternoon.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 7:58 pm

John,
pick up an old Dell monitor or something.
Laptops are abysmal for processing and for Zod's sake,
set your bits to 16!!!!
You cant do decent processing in 8 bit.