M45 Pleiades

[MarkS]

Finally finished processing this Pleiades.  It's not perfect but I'm pretty happy with it.

Modified Sony A7S on Tak Epsilon 180ED: 460 subs of 30sec at ISO 10000.  i.e. nearly 4 hours of total exposure.

Bayer Drizzle stacked in PixInsight - this took hours and hours of processing and 220Gbytes of disk space but gave incredible sharpness in the centre of the image and very nicely behaved background noise.  Background extraction was done using a mixture of PixInsight DBE and final adjustments using an experimental Photoshop CC technique in 32bit mode.  The main data stretch was performed in IRIS with some final curves adjustment in Photoshop CC.



50% and 100% versions here:
http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/2016/pleiades20161129medium.jpg
http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/2016/pleiades20161129large.jpg

Mark

[Carole]

Absolutely beautiful Mark.  Carole

[Fay]

Extremely beautiful Mark

Fay

[JohnP]

Fantastic Mark.. had to check this out on my 4K 28 inch screen full size - looks superb - just a feint hint of noise in the dark bits. Pin sharp, super colours & tons of wispy brown bits - bet this would look fantastic printed A3 or A2...

congrats on a gobsmacking image... John

[MarkS]

had to check this out on my 4K 28 inch screen full size

Jealous?  Me?  What? 

Thanks for your comment.

Mark

[JohnP]

Jealous?  Me?  What? 

Hey Mark entry level 4K displays are cheap nowadays... if only I could get a A7S for the same price.....

[julian]

Very nice Mark