M97, The Owl Nebula

Well, I finally had a clear night and was able to get out and image M97. It is shot thru my TOA-150 at F/7.3. It consists of 90 mins Lum binned 1X and 15 min ea. R,G, B 2X binned. I processed with CCDsoft and Paintshop ProX. Thanks for any advise, Tom

Attached Image:

hi Tom,

that is a beauty!
may I ask, why don`t You use Photoshop CS2 for Your processing...?
It holds sdo many powerful items and tools.
can You sharea bit about PaintshopProX...?
thanks
Diets

Tom Osterholt said:
.....It consists of 90 mins Lum binned 1X and 15 min ea. R,G, B 2X binned...... Thanks for any advise

I would go longer on the RGB, Tom. There's no way to pull the rabbit out of the hat if the data just isn't there.
Processing is so much easier when you have good data to work with. Sharpening good data, for instance, makes details pop out. Sharpening noisy data gives you things like mottling and artifacts.
There is a point of diminishing returns when gathering exposures, but it's going to be on the order of hours for each master sub.

dan