processed M20

I have learned a bit in the last 2 days of working with AIP4WIN and CS2. Bear with me and please look at this new image and tell me if you think I am going the right way.
Note the stars are all colors and sizes, this is as they were captured without manipulation.

Attached Image:

Not bad Floyd, but I believe it is a bit oversaturated... (overprocesing is something we all fall into, as it is hard to stop processing, sometimes...)

Practice makes perfection, so keep at it!

Hi Floyd. The image looks good in several ways. The star color looks great, especially that you didn't stretch them and lose all the color. The nebula itself is probably oversaturated, as Ivan pointed out, but the color looks pretty good. I suggest that you go for less color and allow the backgound to be a little lighter, even if it means showing a little more noise. Lastly, I would guess that you can still get a tighter focus, which would probably do more for the image than any other single thing. It is possible that your focus is perfect, and that the stars are larger because of error in the tracking of the mount. If that is the case, it is a much harder problem to deal with than the focus. At any rate, the image looks great and you have already made great strides with your processing! Keep the images coming!
Cheers,
Tyler

Looks like you are on your way. I kinda feel like "Less is More" when it comes to image processing. Try to take images for as long as possible without saturating and get as many as you can. Getting the signal to noise ratio up is the key. If I had plenty of time I would have taken 2 to 3 hours of Lum and 1 hour each of RGB. The attached image of M20 was made with an old Starlight Xpress SXL8p CCD camera on a Meade SN-8 at last years Oki-Tex starparty. The seeing was rough since M20 was low which also limited how much data I could get. Alll I did was Dark and Flat corrections and a little stretching and then did the LRGB combine. I have not been doing LRGB for long, but I really like what can be done. I was never able to get anything close to this with film.

L=60m, RGB=20m (5 minute subs)
SXL8p CCD
SN-8 Meade
CI-700 Mount
Guider HX-516
Astro-Art 3

If we could ever get another clear night down here I would shoot some more images. It has been 130+ days since we had a great night.

Attached Image:

Well, Floyd, I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to practice some. I took your data and reprocessed it. I think it lost some, but gained some.

Alex

Attached Image:

Hi Floyd,
Your images are looking very good,especially considering you are just starting out.

I found it is very easy to do too much to an image trying to make it look better,this is even easier in the begining when we are trying to learn what works and what doesn't.Keep at it and you will get better everytime

Setting the blackpoint has always proved a challenge for me and still is,I have learned to rely on the histogram and the numbers to do it,they don't lie to me like my eyes do!


I would agree the thing that would improve your image the most would be a sharper focus and better tracking.Good data just looks better and is easier to process.It is not so easy to get sometimes.

Looking forward to your next.

Take care,
Jason