Another from the weekend, Cocoon Nebula 59x90s ISO 320

[Daniel]

Hi All, here's another I grabbed over the weekend, not great, but definitely the best i've done on this particular object.

Anyway, really needs a longer FL sscope for this one, but here it is......






Daniel
:O)

[RobertM]

That really is amazing Daniel.  If you could get those stars just a knats sharper for the closeup crops then it would rival any widefield refractor for sharpness.  Once the temperature drops you'll see a lot of the noise go and be able to bring out more nebulosity. 

[JohnP]

Not bad - I am currently working on a reprocess of some of my old data - it really is a PITA to process... John

[Daniel]

You should see my other attempts at this, I barely managed to resolve a smudge

[MarkS]

Daniel

I'm amazed at what you are managing to capture.  The dark lane is quite obvious in this picture and needs that kind of scale to show it.

I'm very interested in your processing sequence.  I know you use Photoshop for most of the post-processing, but how do you do the initial stack?  Do you use offsets, darks and flats - and what software do you use for it?

Mark

[Daniel]

Hi Mark, Im using Deep Sky Stacker, would love to get into using maxim, but I always find it quite complicated.

I use as many Darks as I can muster, Flats (about 100 of them at ISO 100) and another 100 Bias frames, though I re-use my bias images.

Would stacking in maxim yield any different results? might give it a try to see!

Daniel
:O)

[RobertM]

Would stacking in maxim yield any different results? might give it a try to see

Most probably.  Make sure you process the darks, flats and bias into master frames; that way you'll reduce processing time second time around.  Also worth noting is that V4 loads everything into memory then stacks which doesn't work very well for large DSLR images.  V5 has a different routine which is much more economical on memory and can do hundreds large images at a time.  Alternatively ImagesPlus is more geared towards DSLR work or perhaps even Nebulosity...

Hope that helps
Robert