A Couple of Galaxies

Looks like I wasnt the only one making use of the clear night on Friday.

Heres a couple of very quickly processed images

Firstly NGC2903 - A lovely barred spiral in Leo.

webtreatz.com/component/option,com_zoom/...geNo,6/key,47/hit,1/

Secondly the magnificent M51;

webtreatz.com/component/option,com_zoom/...geNo,6/key,48/hit,1/

Details as usual under the image.

Excellent Dave. I think perhaps your best images so far? Certainly, M51 is the best we've seen here.

Dave

Really great images Dave - as usual! We're becoming accustomed to this high standard now! I've a bit of catching up to do.

2 comments:
* The levels might have been slightly clipped. If you open the images in Photoshop, you'll see that the left side of the histogram has been clipped to the peak. Might create a slightly more natural blend if you didn't clip it as much.

* There's loads of detail in the images. My personal taste would be to do an unsharp mask of the spiral arms to improve their contrast and then run the image in Neat Image to reduce the noise. This would bring up the detail & contrast of the arms but surpass the resulting noise. I gave it a go on the M51 image and it worked reasonably well for a jpg.

Don't get me wrong - super images the way they are. Must my 2 cent.

Out of curiosity, how would you rate the Atik Vs the modified 300d? Much of a difference?

Have fun,

Great images Dave, keep up the good work

Great detail in both of those shots Dave, NGC 2903 is a great shot, and M51 is superb !

Keith..

Both stunning images :shock:
Clear skies seem to have missed Galway apart from an hour on Friday so it's good to be able to see results from other parts.

Trev