IC1396 Elephants Trunk in Cepheus First Light Atik 314L

[Fay]

17x480 secs with Atik 314L, Ha, via ED80. Guided with PHD.

The Moon & amount of dew made this image a bit noisy. What with Cepheus being at the zenith, It's a wonder there were not fish swimming about in the ED80!!!! Will do again th better conditions.

[Mike]

Very nice Fay. However, you have clipped the white point. I would suggest backing off on the histogram and bring the white peak underneath the maximum. Use curves to bring the details out.

[RobertM]

Lovely Fay, looks like the guiding is still spot on and not undersampled either !  Have you tried adding these subs to the one you posted in the gallery last year ?

As Mike has pointed out you can get a lot out of this image in Photoshop but it's easy to over do.

[Fay]

Will have a look at that Mike. No, Robert I was not thinking of adding it to the other one, it is too different.

[Fay]

Due to sky being really light due to Moon & heavy dew, I have not processed so hard. I think it is a bit better than the first attempt, but not too good.  I will do it again on first good night

[Rocket Pooch]

can you e-mail me the stacked fit fit file fay

[RobertM]

Hi Fay,

Could you email one of the subs, preferably one of the better ones.  Also a dark frame if you have one handy.

Many thanks
Robert

[Fay]

Robert, I don't know your E Mail address. Can you send me a mail please.

[Daniel]

Looks amazing Fay, I've been quite dissapointed every time I've tried to capture this nebula but you seem to have caught lots of detail. I definitely prefer the second less processed image, the stars seem to not be as blown out as the first image.

[Rocket Pooch]

ok, fay sent me a stacked image, it needs master darks and bias, but its not too bad



and false colour

[RobertM]

Not bad Chris   There are a few hot pixels and trailed holes there which SD Mask combine would remove.

You've brought out more subtle detail in the nebula but should be better next time with the extra subs Fay - I think it needs closer to 2 hours...

Chris, could you outline the false colour technique please.

[Fay]

Thanks a lot Chris. There were lots of black marks on the image, that I stacked in AstroArt. When I tried a stack in DSS there were no black bits, but DSS only acccepted 11 subs.

[Rocket Pooch]

Hi,

I worked off the stacked image fay sent so I could not do a sigma combine to remove the cold and hot pixels.

The false colour technique is sooooo simple, pull a photo into photoshop, change the mode to RGB, do a levels, and only increase the RED channel and bingo.

Chris

[RobertM]

Robert, I don't know your E Mail address. Can you send me a mail please.

Hi Fay, It's in my profile so just click on the 'RobertM' by any post.