M42/M43/NGC1977

This view taken last night - a stack of 12 lights and 1 dark - all 30secs, ISO1600 152,, f5 Newtonian. A bit burnt in the middle perhaps but I'm quite pleased with it nevertheless.



Clear skies,

Paul.

Thats a super shot.

Makes me wish I had a dslr now

Hey Paul i see what you mean about the core but hey what about it,i really like it nice subtle colours and very sharp great effort.

By the way Paul when you image with the DSLR do you shoot raw images.

Great image Paul
What scope did you use.

Thanks guys.

Yes, always shoot RAW + JPEG with the DSLR and use the RAWs for any further processing if the JPEGs look like they have potential. The difference is huge - working with 12bits per pixel instead of 8 gives much more scope for bending the curves and stretching the histogram without creating obvious stepping effects.

As Deep Sky Stacker doesn't understand Minolta RAW files I convert everything to TIFF before feeding it into DSS and it's here that the first lot of optimisation takes place - I use Adobe Camera RAW 4.1 which comes with Photoshop Elements 5 - I only have to do the adjustments once, then I just use the "As Previous Conversion" option which makes sure that all the other frames are processed the same as the first.

It's working well but there's always so much more to learn!

John, the scope I used here was a 6" f5 Newtonian on Meade LXD75 mount - last year's Lidl special. Great 'scope IMV!