I'm getting better! For my second successful CCD photo my focus is much better and I improved my image processing skills a lot since last week (Notice the almost realistic colors!). I also took a long time polar aligning the mount to get the scope to track more accurately.
This picture is an LRGB composition with the green frame re-used as the luminance data. I spent over 12 hours on this picture! But that's not the actual camera time. I worked on a lot of different elements along the chain necessary to take a great picture, such as: better polar alignment, better telescope tracking, better focusing, and better image processing techniques.
Over the past week I spent four nights using telescopes until very late at night. It seems I've gotten into a weird state: during the day I read about astrophotography incessantly, and at night I'm up on the deck till the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps I've been infected with some strange disease.... I'm headed up there again tonight.
M42 Orion Nebula
Pictor 416XTE on 12" f/10 LX200
40 sec x 4 green, 40 sec x 2 red binned 2x2, 30 sec blue binned 2 x 2
40 sec x 4 green, 40 sec x 2 red binned 2x2, 30 sec blue binned 2 x 2
LRGB Processed using Maxim DLL 2.11 and Astroart 4.0
1 comment:
Wow! That's really cool. It looks like the cover a textbook.
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