M51 - 28/02/2007

Here's an image I just captured before the clouds rolled in.
30 x 1min exposures; 12" f6.3 SCT; ST-8XME
Just quickly processed while I wait for the clouds to part. Hope to spend a bit more time with it tomorrow evening.



Advice on processing of galaxies would be appreciated.

Regards,

Nice one Michael,

If you have similar weather to me then the images quality is down to your mount (too windy for me). I assume you have the autoguiding up and running? The cores look slghtly burned out. I take it you are using photoshop or Maxim to process the images. In photoshop the usual wisdom is to drag the histogram from the white point to the edge of the histogram curve. I have found that this burns out the cores so I usually start by dragging the midpoint arrow close to the edge of the curve and then keep repeating this until I can see the galaxy start to come out of the background. At this point I apply curves to bring out more detail. OK, at this point the image will start to grey out but I then do a levels adjustment and bring up the dark point to lower the background after that its a case of trial and error. Apply sharpening and colour range adjustments to localised areas then a general gaussian blur.

This method may work but with imaging there is no set solution.

Could you send me the fits image so I can play with it. I have not had a chance to image this yet.

That's a great image! The detail in the spiral arms is lovely!

Don't know anything about processing really so can't give you anything more useful than praise

Bart.

Very nice indeed. I'm just in myself from a very satisfying session - mostly visual but I did try a few shots of the Moon and Saturn.

Forgot to say Micael,

I have some curve profiles for photshop which I use with galaxies and nebula. SOme work well but it depends on the image.

PS The wee program I got from you on the last visit worked completely with telescope and ccd recognition no problem until I closed it however when I restarted it I'd no ccd or telescope control. No worries I am still happy with the software I am running.

Kieran,

Thanks for the tips! Will give these a go.

Cheers,