Orion widefield

Hi guys,

Took this during the week. It's slightly artificial in that lots of LP has been stripped out of it by the creation and subtraction of an artificial dark frame, but what's good about is that the colours have survived the trip. Also, being a slightly hazy sky the brighter stars have bloomed a bit which adds to the effect!



Clear skies,

Paul.

You still got a very nice result there all the same Paul. Mind you, the stars Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Rigel, look somewhat inflated! Was this intentional, or a result of some of the processing? I'd say it has nothing to do with tracking, because all the stars in the FOV look fine.

What are the details of the image? Scope/camera, exposure times etc?

Seanie.

Thanks Seanie. The brighter stars have bloomed due to atmospeheric haze, of which there was a fair bit.

Camera was my trusty Minolta Dynax 5D, 24mm lens 15 sec @ f2.8, ISO 1600 - tripod mounted, no drive RAW mode processed with Adobe Camera RAW 3.5 and Photoshop Elements 3.

Paul.

Nice shot Paul. I'd say that creating the artifical subtraction frame is not necessarily the best way to go. Adjusting the histogram generally gives a more pleasing result Any chance you can post the unprocessed frame and I can show you what I mean?

That would be interesting Dave - I often do adjust things just by histogram but I've found this technique works really well too.

This is the jpeg out of the camera - the shot above was actually made from the RAW version of the same frame. Also the one above is slightly cropped - this is a straight 25% resize, but interested to see what can be done with it!



Clear skies,

Paul.

Paul,

Unfortunately the jpg compression means that processing this just results in the jpg artifacts showing up more. Any chance you could upload a copy of the uncompressed version it to your site and just post the link?? Even a bmp would be fine or a jpg with the compression set to a low level. You could even ZIP the bmp if uploading large files is an issue. I find 10% works well. I think there is a lot that can be done with this shot, but it can only be done with a better source file.

The other problem is the wispy cloud across the lower portion of the image but that can be sorted. Just makes it a little more difficult.

Here's all I can do with the highly compressed version.


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