Trio in Leo

Hi all,

Below is a link to my first attempt at the famous Trio in Leo, imaged the nights of March 31 and April 3, 2005.

Technical details:
Scope: Takahashi FS102 @ f/8
Camera: SBIG ST-8XE with CFW-8a filter wheel and Astrodon LRGB filters
Exposures:
L: 16 x 10 minutes (2 hours 40 minutes total) binned 1x1
R: 10 x 5 minutes binned 2x2
G: 10 x 5 minutes binned 2x2
B: 10 x 5 minutes binned 2x2

Images captured and calibrated in CCDSoft. RGB combine and gradient removal in MaximDL. Levels,curves and LRGB combine applied in Photoshop. Final processing done in Photoshop.

I had a heck of a time processing the background. As I was performing my LRGB combines, the background was getting splotchier and splotchier with conspicuous swirls of color. Darkening the background would only clip data. Even this attempt still led to clipped data.

Enjoy all!
Eric

Attached Image:

Excellent shot Eirc! wonderful detail & colors!
Thank you!

Eric,

Very nice...looks like the processing somehow softened things up, but you have some great data here.

I just tried out Russ Croman's Gradient Exterminator for Photoshop...it's remarkable! Saves hours of work. I suggest you try it out. You can download a trial at http://www.rc-astro.com.

Jeff

Hi Eric,
That's a wonderful shot. Colors and details in all three look great, and your background looks really good to me. That kaleidascope effect happens to me whenever I don't have perfectly flat fields in each color. I guess nothing takes the place of an even background to begin with. I know that in AA3 there Chris Icough has an artificial flat field plug-in that he's been helping me work with. Perhaps Maxim has something similar.
Great work,
Larry

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Jeff: I do have Russ' GradientXterminator. Wonderful tool, indeed! It darkened the background a little too artificially, as I did not have bad gradients in the original data (I used an IDAS LPS filter).

Larry: the more I think about it, the likelier it is that my flats are at fault. I know I rotated the camera before taking flats for my luminance, so that could be a factor (my luminance data has this weird brightening of the sky between NGC 3628 and the bright star, almost like a galactic filament!). Given that this is an LLRGB combine, the luminance data probably contributed to the blotchiness. Hmmm.... what if I used GradientXterminator on the luminance data before the LLRG combine????

Eric

Fantastic!!