M81 - Bodes galaxy and M82 - Cigar Galaxy

[ApophisAstros]

First two target acquisition!
20 x 300sec subs (Although i took 25)
6 Darks
6 Lights
Stacked with DSS
Processed a li[/img]ttle in Nebulosity
Very pleased with the guiding PHD2 , around 1 arc minutes.
Any suggestions on processing gladfully accepted.!


With some colour
Roger

[Carole]

Hurray, your first DSO.  Well done. I will post up some advice when l get home as smartphone is fiddly.  But basically you've lost the colour and overstretched. Explain later.  What did you post process in?

Carole

[doug]

The image is too large to go into my Obs Offrs July report. You must use a different method to post your images .... Flickr or Imger. Then I can drag them onto my reports. And yes, I do know how to drag the corners into the correct size.

Doug.

[The Thing]

Very good first effort. I assume in your details you meant six flats! More darks and flats helps. As Carole said, a bit overstretched. I always found Nebulosity difficult for processing, you can get pretty good results just by tweaking the sliders in DSS and sharpening in something like The GIMP (free at gimp.org).

As to posting size, big is good as it lets others inspect the finer detail. However it's hard for Doug.

What you can do is post a link to the thumbnail image on the Gallery from the details page e.g http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10050/normal_NGC6992EV.jpg
and link it to the full size version which is what you get when you click the thumbnail, e.g.
http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/displayimage-1372.html&fullsize=1

then use code like this (Replace curly brackets with square brackets) and people can then click your image to get to the full size one you uploaded.

{url=http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/displayimage-1372.html&fullsize=1}{img}http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10050/normal_NGC6992EV.jpg{/img}{/url}

You can test it out using the full posting page and the Preview button to make sure it's working before you post.

Doug can then right click and copy the small image on the forum and paste it into his presentation.

HTH

Duncan

[The Thing]

Oh, and for better colour in DSS disable all the background calibration stuff and in the Raw/FITS DDP settings dialog disable the colour options in there as well as the set black point to Zero. DSS processing isn't very good for colour. In the Image Processing turn up the Saturation (third tab) to at least 20%, set the three colour peaks in the graph so they align (first tab middle control on each colour) make sure the end tab are at the end as well, the in the middle Luminance tab move the 4th slider down to make the vertical part of the graph line be just to the right of the colour peaks - this is a very sensitive control. Then click Apply and watch your image come to life. You can select a part of your image e.g. one galaxy by click and drag to speed up experimentation as DSS will only re-draw that part of the picture when you click apply.

When happy save as a 16bit Tif with adjustments applied.

BTW if you open DSS and go straight to the Processing section you can open the Autosave file (may be FITS or TIF depending on settings) DSS created, this is the result of the stack before the adjustments are applied.

HTH

[Carole]

I think Duncan has covered everything I was going to say.  What are you post-processing with Roger?  i.e. the stretching after stacking bit. 

Also I haven't used DSS for some time, but do you have to input your camera model on the bottom left tabs?   I think the generic Canon camera is sufficient.  I remember when I had a OSC camera if I did not put in the right debaying choice (in the same drop down list), you could lose the colour.

Well done getting everything up and running so quickly (though it might not seem so to you). 
Polar alignment
EQMod
PHD
Capture
Focus
etc etc

Also what did you use for Capture Roger?  I am asking because of having spent DSC with you and remember the problems of live view and GOTO not going to the right place (was the mount an hour out as I suspected?)

Carole

[Rick]

The image is too large to go into my Obs Offrs July report.

If the images are stored in the O.A.S. gallery, then:

• Use the image name beginning "normal_" as the one posted here.
  
  
  • The full-sized image, in this case, has this url: http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10062/M81_Nebulosity_cr2.jpg
  • ... so the forum (and Doug) friendly version is: http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10062/normal_M81_Nebulosity_cr2.jpg
  This is generally better than just using the forced "width=nnn" option to force a large image to be displayed at a smaller size.
  
  
• Also post the link to the image's gallery page. From there, folk can get to the full-sized image and also read all the useful technical details you will have entered in the gallery's info fields for the image. You can find that URL on that page. For this image it is http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/displayimage-1690.html

On the flip-side, Doug, if there's an image on the O.A.S. gallery that is too big for the monthly report, see whether there's a version with a name beginning with "normal_" available. If there is, it may be exactly what you need.

[ApophisAstros]

I used BackyardEOS for capture and only aligned with Polaris.
Roger

[Carole]

You've added a coloured version, what did you do different?

Now just need to learn how to stretch without stretching the core too much, but can't advise unless you are using photoshop.

only aligned with Polaris.

So you didn't align on any stars, just went straight to your target?  That's pretty good, especially considering your GOTOs were not going to the right place last week, again what was different?

Carole

[Kenny]

Well done Roger. Very impressive start to DSO.