M8/M20 repro

For what it's worth, I had a tinkle with some other data from 2009 Queensland Astrofest on the weekend. This time M8 Lagoon and M20 Trifid Nebulae. Just to practise processing more than anything else.

I'm not really happy with the framing of the pair. Next time I'll just focus on one of them, rather than trying to cram both in the same frame. Just doesn't look like I had intended. At the time I was experimenting with field flatteners, before I got the WO FFIV, and the stars are a little funky.

Certainly a lot more colourful this time around. My original processing attempt is below for comparison. I flipped the repro for some reason.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …piggo/525356626​0/lightbox

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Wow what a difference, beautiful image Troy. Great color all the way across and M8 is particularly deep and 3D like. Nice and smooth but with plenty of detail. Excellent work.

I like the framing, probably because it's something different. Is that the ED80 at full focal length ?
What exposure time/camera ?
The new pp is excellent. Is this the benefit of splitting the stars out, working on the fuzzies and then dropping the stars back on again ? Whatever it is, it works.

Thanks for the kind words, guys.

Steve, ...oh wait, you're both Steves... it was ISO800 10x4min exposures. Not a huge amount of data and I was pushing it a lot. ED80 and 40D modded. I'm a little unsure of the field of view, as I was testing out a MPCC on the ED80 to see if it helped flatten the field. It didn't. I know it's intended for Newtonians, but I had read that some guys were using them successfully on ED80s. I now use the William Optics Field Flattener IV and it's working a treat. I think the MPCC acted a little like an extender, because I think they both should have fit in the frame a bit more comfortably than they do above. I didn't crop that much off after stacking.

In terms of the PP, yes I did do much of it after separating the stars out. It allows you to stretch the data without bloating/blowing out the stars. I still have to do a post about the technique, although it's not as hard as it might sound if you haven't tried it already.

I measured the distance between some stars and assuming no cropping of the image, it came out as being the full field of a 600mm lens on a 40D.