FINALLY!!! I See 1396!!!

[Daniel]

Last night was just amazing, best night for imaging for months, I thought I'd try my arch nemesis IC1396, Up till this point I haven't been able to resolve more than a smudge of this, but last night I finally got some detail. Just a shame im working a 16 hour day today on the 4 hours of sleep I got last night.

Anyway, Image details are as follows:-

Skywatcher 120ED and Modded Canon 40D
12x600s ISO 320

Darks and Flats Applied

:O)

[Daniel]

By the way, can anyone tell me if this shows up over dark, I've just looked at this on one of the monitors at work and it seems a lot darker than on my laptop where I processed it

:O)

[MarkS]

Well you've certainly caught it now!  Well done.  You've got it very nicely framed.

I think the processing would look better if the red were toned down a notch or two.

Mark

[MarkS]

By the way, can anyone tell me if this shows up over dark

Overall the image is not too dark but the background is bit black for my preference.

[Daniel]

Ahhh, cool, that was what i was worried about, and funny you should mention the red, that was a last minute adjustment I was starting to feel unsure of too.

Shall post a better one when i get home

Thanks

Daniel
:O)

[Rocket Pooch]

definitely got it, but it needs to be brighter....

[RobertM]

I'm glad you managed to bag it.  On my monitor the red looks a bit over saturated and the background could do with lightening a tad which should bring out a bit more nebulosity (and noise of course).

There's just a hint of coma in the corners, are you using a field flattener ?

[Daniel]

Ok, I've re-done the processing, there really was a lot of nebulosity in there still, although I still can't vouch for the colour saturation as Im still viewing it on my laptop.

Robert, no, I didn't use the flattener with this, although the 120 has far less coma than I get with the 80

Anyway's, thanks for the suggestions guy's tell us what you think....

[MarkS]

Daniel,

Ditch that laptop!  The picture you've just posted is unbelievably saturated (at least it is on my monitor).

Mark

[Mike]

WOH!! OVERLOAD!!! I agree with Mark!

[The Thing]

Looks very fine on my calibrated laptop and desktop LCD screens.

We all spend ages processing and tweaking pictures so they look good (and some look really amazing) but do they look good on all screens? I use a PANTONE Colorvision USB Spyder sensor and software (quite an old model these days). Very easy and not expensive. Could be a useful addition to your astro imaging toolboxes.

[MarkS]

It's almost certainly to do with gamma.

If I change the gamma of Daniel's image it looks perfect (a very good image Daniel!)

If I do the same gamma change to one of the standard grey bars on a typical astrophoto site chosen at random (e.g. http://www.schursastrophotography.com) then I can't distinguish between the shades of black.  BTW my monitor is adjusted to normally give equal steps between the shades in that scale.   

Probably neither is "right" or "wrong" - they're just different.  I guess my monitor is calibrated differently to Duncan and Daniel.

Mark

[Daniel]

Hi Guy's thanks for the comments, yes, I tested the image on a professionally calibrated monitor used for film compositing and it's definitely quite overblown. I've used the calibration website to sort my monitor gamma on my laptop, though I don't hold much faith in the screen itself, being quite a cheap laptop.

I was going to Re-Process this, but I got another 2 hours of data on it last night and want to add that to it, so will wait till that's done.


Thanks

Daniel
:O)

[The Thing]

At the end of the day it's all in the eye of the beholder ... so it probably looks perfect to the CCD

[Daniel]

Right as before, im not sure how this will look on your monitors, but I checked this on one of the calibrated monitors at work and it seems ok, this is with another 2 and as half hours of data at ISO 800 this time so 4 and a half hours in total, though im thinking the latest data is better than the first so may have to re-do the first 2 hours again on a good night.

Anyway, this time it's not so red either