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First real attempt at Deep sky imaging

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20 years 6 months ago #3064 by michaeloconnell
First real attempt at Deep sky imaging was created by michaeloconnell
I tried my hand at a bit of deep sky astrophotography last night. Below is the result:



Details:
LX90 @ f/10 in alt-az mode, 18 x 30sec exposures, ISO 1600.
Sky was a bit hazy and a 75% moon didn't help either, except for purposes of having something to focus onto prior to taking the images.

As I'm a bit new to all this deep sky imaging stuff, I have a couple of questions:
1) Was ISO 1600 a little too much for the conditions or would 800 have been better?
2) I deliberately softened the final shot a bit to make it a bit more aesthetically pleasing? Do I go too far with it? Should I have left it alone?
The way it is now reminds me of how it would look on film.
3) Any other tips?
First I had to manually align and rotate each image in Photoshop- very time consuming!!! When they were all aligned, I then merged them all. I saved my result twice. With one of the images I altered the brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and levels to bring out the stars. I did something similar in the other image to bring out the detail in the nebula itself. Then I merged the two. Took me most of today to just get this one image!
Any suggestions on how to improve on this would be greatly appreciated.

Michael

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20 years 6 months ago #3065 by voyager
Replied by voyager on topic Re: First real attempt at Deep sky imaging
Cool!

The colours came out really well! Goes to show that in this day of CCDs and web cams there is still a lot to be said for good old "wet" photography!

BB

My Home Page - www.bartbusschots.ie

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20 years 6 months ago #3068 by michaeloconnell
Replied by michaeloconnell on topic Re: First real attempt at Deep sky imaging
Ooopps - I meant to say that the camera I have is the Canon EOS 300d (digital slr).
Sorry to disappoint you Bart! :wink:

Michael

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20 years 6 months ago #3069 by stepryan
Replied by stepryan on topic Re: First real attempt at Deep sky imaging
micheal,
great image, well done.
stephen.

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20 years 6 months ago #3070 by voyager
Replied by voyager on topic Re: First real attempt at Deep sky imaging

Ooopps - I meant to say that the camera I have is the Canon EOS 300d (digital slr).
Sorry to disappoint you Bart! :wink:

Michael


Bugger!

Well, it's a good advertisment for Digital SLR cameras so!

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20 years 6 months ago #3093 by dave_lillis
Replied by dave_lillis on topic Re: First real attempt at Deep sky imaging
Hi Michael,
Nice one, , you can just make out 2 stars in the center of that nebula, have you worked out whats the faintest magnitude star you cought in that pic ??

I also find image processing a very time consuming operation, much longer then you actually spend at the scope.
You could start up a new hobby as a graphic artist :wink:

Dave L. on facebook , See my images in flickr
Chairman. Shannonside Astronomy Club (Limerick)

Carrying around my 20" obsession is going to kill me,
but what a way to go. :)
+ 12"LX200, MK67, Meade2045, 4"refractor

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