M8

Lagoon nebula, dark site, Sbig 2000XM, HaRGB 120:90:72:60 secs.

William Optics 80/480 fluorite triplet.

I took a lot of shots but this is a sample combine of one set of them. More shots can be median combined and get more signal but not sure for how much gain.

I'd like some comments here. The core was a bit burnt out but the exposures were only 120 secs Ha and less. F4.8 with a TV .8X flattener/reducer and resolution set to medium (I think that means 2 x 2 binning). So the camera was very sensitive. It is quite a bit more sensitive than a DSLR.

Camera at -26 degrees C.

Greg.

Attached Image:

This object is much like M42. A huge range of brightness. I think the trick is here to either process the image twice, one for the bright areas and one for the dim. Then combine the images in PS to show bright and dim together or two different exposures and again use the PS magic to show both.
Ron Wadoski say's the whole dynamic range can be shown with careful histogram adjustments, but I've never been able to do that.

G'day Greg,

Welcome to the wonderful world of cooled CCD imaging! The learning curve can be long but its fun. My advise is to shoot 5-10 minute frames and stack them to get at least one hour for luminance and 30-50 minutes for each color filter. Median combine is good. Careful DDP will tone down the bright core and help bring out the faint nebulosity as well.

Good luck!

Best,
Tom

Nice work Greg. I'm sure you will like the ST2000 camera.... I love mine!! I can't imagine that the exposures were really burned out with only 2 minutes of data. Do you have a raw (unprocessed) frame that you could post?