M45 Pleiades

[troypiggo]

Seized the opportunity to go to Leyburn dark site on the weekend. Wanted to give the new Williams Optics Flattener IV a real workout on the ED80 doublet. I'm very happy with the results - I think the little ED80 knew what was coming if I couldn't get these flat fields sorted out so she really turned it on for me. http://www.iceinspace.com.au/vbiis/images/smilies/happy19.gif

The second hour of data has all been corrupted, something was going on with the downloading of images from the camera to computer. By the time I sorted that out, it was late, M45 had flipped, and my battery was running low. I had planned to just image this most of the night, but equipment issues meant I only ended up with 9x4mins plus darks and flats. Still a bit of noise around, but did my best to tease it out. Still learning little PP tricks.

First time I'd used flats too. Very happy with the results of that too.

All in all I'm pleased with the result now and look forward to collecting more data to enhance this beautiful and serene cluster.

http://piggo.com/%7Etroy/photos/2009/2009_11_21/M45-ISO800-9x4m-PP.jpg

[NovaTJ]

Beautiful! Only a few shots??? Looks like a couple hours worth to me! Great job!

[Eng27DCFD]

Thats a really nice shot. My question is, is that how it looks with the naked eye, or is that done with special filters?

[troypiggo]

Thanks guys.

Eng - Short answer - doesn't look like that to the naked eye. On some brighter nebulae you see a bit of the nebulosity, but not to the extent that the camera can pick up with longer exposures. You can use filters to increase contrast, but still you won't see to the extent the camera can catch. Simply not enough photons hitting your eye quick enough I think.

I'm not very good at visual observing. There were some experienced astronomers out there Saturday night with us, and we would look through the same scope, same eyepiece, same object. They could make out much more than I can, even when I know what I'm looking for.

Plus, unless the star colour is really dominant, I see everything through the eyepiece as greeny/bluey colours. Can't make out the red in nebula like Cat's Paw (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=743947) with my naked eye.

This shot was taken without any filters.

[Eng27DCFD]

So how do you add the color in? is it done in PS?

[troypiggo]

What I meant was that I can't make out the colour when I look through the eyepiece, but when you white balance the shots you've taken with the camera the colours are there. So they're not really added as such. It's just like any normal photography where you do a white balance adjust to suit daylight, cloud, tungsten etc. That's pretty much the only editing - getting white and black points, white balance, and then stretching the histogram to get the detail out of the dark end.

[jblaschke]

Eng, the color is actually there, it's just too faint for the human eye to detect. In the film days, you'd need exposures of hours to record that color. Now, with digital, we can combine multiple short exposures to reach that cumulative long exposure time and bring out those faint colors. Also, you can combine shorter exposures with longer exposures to do a celestial "HDR" effect, so certain bright areas (like the Trapezium in the Orion nebula) don't blow out and retain definition while fainter, redder areas farther away get proper exposure. Digital has been a real boon for amateur astrophotographers. There are hobbyists producing complex images comparable to those of the world's top observatories 30 years ago...

[jblaschke]

Very nice Pleiades shot, Troy. I'm just getting back into astrophotography, and haven't had this kind of success with the Pleiades yet. Work like yours inspires me.

[Celestron]

Very nice troy ! However it is leaning a bit towards aqua color in the blue . Is this from the optics on the ED80 ??

[Nighthound]

Great work Troy. It is leaning a tad green but a good bit of nebulosity captured for sure. The area to the right of Merope actually contains a faint amount of emission nebula so there's a hint of pink there. You can clearly see the color difference from the reflection nebulosity that dominates this object in your shot.

[troypiggo]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll look at the white balance again.

[Catanonia]

nice work mate, for only a few shots, that is really really good.

Did you have really dark skies ?

[jetcode]

sorry for asking a dumb question but the resultant image is the stack of raw images merged?

[troypiggo]

Thanks mate. Yes, I was at a dark site nearly 3 hours west of Brisbane. No power, all off 12V batteries. But very dark skies.

[MidnightSun]

Great shooting there......Nice one.

[troypiggo]

Went back and did some re-processing of the same data. Still a bit noisy, but I'm happier with the white balance and a bit more nebulosity coming through.

[Celestron]

Looks much better tho now , the colors look dead on .

[ady.space]

nice pic troy