Orpington Astronomical Society

Astronomy => Astrophotography => Topic started by: Fay on Apr 14, 2009, 14:22:17

Title: M31 Les Granges/ reworked
Post by: Fay on Apr 14, 2009, 14:22:17
When in France, I was a bit upset that this M31 turned out , looking out of focus with blobby stars.
It was 17x180 secs, Atik 314L. no darks or flats.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3384/3441731340_c42c513e93_b.jpg)

I decided to rework it using DDP in Maxim & was quite pleased with the result, came out a lot better. I tried a couple opf times, the one before having the black point clipped, but this was was ok. Thanks

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3580/3441737086_2653cf6d4d_b.jpg)
Title: Re: M31 Les Granges/ reworked
Post by: JohnP on Apr 14, 2009, 14:26:21
So does DDP re-focus as well..... :-)

Why do you think first image looked so way out of focus - do you just think it was star bloat caused by white point saturation...?

2nd image looks fantastic - you'll hve to try & add some colour to this later in the year...

I sense a Robofocus maybe going on the 2nd hand mkt soon.... :-)

JOHN
Title: Re: M31 Les Granges/ reworked
Post by: Fay on Apr 14, 2009, 14:31:02
Well, John, I had always assumed it was out of focus, also Olly told me it was. So i cast it away & never bothered any more. It is like an ugly ducking turning into a bit of a swan! :D
Title: Re: M31 Les Granges/ reworked
Post by: Daniel on Apr 15, 2009, 09:40:58
Fay, That's wonderfull, Experly Processed, so much detail now, love the outer limbs especially! Might be worth looking through some other older images and seeing if you can pull out more detail on those aswell with your new found processing skills. I'm still re-working some of the images I took last year, although my guiding left a lot to be desired back then.

Daniel
:O)
Title: Re: M31 Les Granges/ reworked
Post by: Fay on Apr 15, 2009, 11:35:33
Thanks Daniel, appreciated. I nearly deleted it all, but a good idea to have another go at images we are not that happy about
Title: Re: M31 Les Granges/ reworked
Post by: Rocket Pooch on Apr 15, 2009, 16:25:26
Hi Fay,

Thats much better, one more thing you might try is a Lucy-Richardson deconvolution, if Maxim has a manual star selection it will probably make the stars a little rounder, but the result to date is excellent.

Chris
Title: Re: M31 Les Granges/ reworked
Post by: Fay on Apr 15, 2009, 16:29:07
Thanks a lot Chris, I will try that