A work in progress

As per my previous post I had a second night of beautiful clear skies. I had a few issues with plate solving though. Loaded a previous nights frame and solved it. asked the scope to goto and it was out by over a degree???? Some manual moves to frame it gave me an opportunity to gather another 3 hours of data. I have had several processing attempts. Some of which are posted here. Before christmas I spent some time with Mark Casto http://astrocasto.blogspot.co.uk/ where I learned and brushed up on a few Photoshop processes.

 From these images you can see I have enjoyed having a play. First image was a 2 hour process with flats removed and processed to highlight the dark dust lanes. Very pleased with the focus and flat image that the new spacers provide. I especially like the subtle wispy tendrils. 10 minute subs were used. Sometimes underprocessing brings out more details.

The second Image is a more in depth

process concentrating on keeping the colours as natural as possible without clipping the bottom end. 5 hours of data provide a smoother image.  A little more to do with the background colour. A big learning curve here as this is the first time I have used photoshop to process an image. I am very happy with the progress made so far.

The final image here is a combination of the 2 leaving the dark dust more prominent. I like the way the outer edges are a striking red from the internal pink, colour correction to maintain star colour. Finally I used a what appears to be an aggressive kernel filter to remove some intensity from the stars. It has clipped the bottom end but I like the way it has removed some stars thus focus the eye on the nebulosity. Beauty is of cousre in the eye of the beholder And the point of this post was to show differences in processing on different areas of the image.  As per usual the weather has closed in again and I see in the forecast a week of rain. I would like a few more hours in here before it is complete, but I do think I am on the way to a very pleasing image. Tell me what you think fellow bloggers.

Winter Project. Rosette Nebula.

This is a processd image from last night. 2 Hours worth of data in 10 minute subs. I would like to collect at least 6-8 hours plus calibration frames. No calibration frames taken as yet.
                 I see the way I would like this post to pan out showing a 2, 4, 6 hour image then a fianl calibrated processed pic to complete. But as we all know weather here is a shocker and this is the first real attempt in approx 6 weeks. We will see how this progresses and I will of course keep you all posted.
                 I now have my own set of T2 spacers and completed the set up last night, with CCD inspector showing a very flat field with even focus throughout. The biggest defect I can see here is the need for a flat field.
                 Even though the wind was swirly outside the dome the guiding graph showed no errors in the 2 hours taken. Although expected I am very impressed with the Ha sensitivity of the camera a huge difference between the un modded Canon 40D. It will be fun to go through targets imaged over the last couple of years and see the differences.

Comet Ison Animation

Before Comet Ison drove himself headlong to a fiery destruction. I captured these images on the morning of the 28th Oct. travveling at 115 thousand mph. 30x 2 minute exposures .