ngc 6946

hi,

A nice face on spiral galaxy in Cepheus/Cygnus border.
Takahashi Mewlon 250 at f 12. SBIG st8e 2x2 binning. 60 minute ( 5x 12 ) exposure


Clear skies

Larry Citro

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Nice work. Looks like the seeing was just a bit too much for this combination. The sharpening helps take this pretty well; you've taken the sharpening about as far as you can. You have a few stars with dark halos; I have a few suggestions for an alternative method that helps deal with this.

Method 1: If you are using deconvolution for your sharpening, do it a little less aggressively. Then open the image in Photoshop, and select the bright portions of the object but not the stars, using the Color range tool. If necessary, use Select | Modify | Contract with a value of 2-3 to pull the selection away from the stars (then feature 1-2 pixels) before you sharpen.

Method 2: Do two (or more) different versions of deconvolution, and save them with different filenames. Use varying amounts of aggressiveness. THen use layers in Photoshop to put the best of each image together into a single image.

Ron Wodaski
author of "The New CCD Astronomy"
http://www.newastro.com

Oh yes, that's a beauty.

Here's a smaller scale but in color:

http://www.licha.de/AstroWeb/gallery_fullsize.php3?iSOId=298&iBPId=100

Fornax 50 mount and 10 inch Discovery Newton @ f/4. The Discovery shows nice mirror pinching

Tom
mehr freude. http://www.licha.de/AstroWeb 49° 13' 54" N

hi Ron,

Thanks for the tip. I don't have Photoshop but do have Paintshop pro which supports layers ( I just had to figure out how to use them .. the manual is cleear as mud about this ). Anyway here's a layered image the original layered with a unconvolved one.

This layering business opens up endless possibilites !!


Clear skies,


Larry Citro

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