Nice. I would like to hear about exposure/processing. Nothing wrong with crop suggestions on this. Just the usual composition preference choice between seeing additional details vs the context of the surrounding scene. My thought is I think something closer to 4:5 would look better then 9:16, not sure why (probably because I am currently playing with 4x5 film)
Brilliant image. People don't realize how much time and effort to take a shot like this. Thanks for sharing. I would also like to know how you did it.
Harsha
That's a great shot. You can't go wrong with a good subject.
If I were to suggest any improvements, I'd recommend taking some short exposures and masking & blending them into the core. There's a lot of really nice detail in the core. I took a similar shot, which has exposures ranging from 30 minutes to 10 seconds, in order to capture all the dynamic range. It's sort of an astro-HDR http://smu.gs/14bAWIu
It's surprising how bright the core is.
I'm no pro but feel free to shoot me a PM if I can be of any assistance.
Thanks for sharing...
After i processed this image what you mentioned to do was my first thought, Astro-HDR, brilliant! I had no idea the center would be that bright. Thanks for the suggestion on exposure lengths.
Basically my telescope is my lens, 800mm, F3.9. The telescope is attached to a motorized mount which follows the subject through the sky this enables you to do exposures of great length and not have star trails. Once the subject is in focus and framed in the camera I took about 20 exposures at 3200 iso and 30 seconds, then took another 20 exposures at 6400 iso and 30 seconds.
My processing technique is very basic at the moment since i just started doing this. I upload all the shots into lightroom and delete any which might have satellite trails through the subject and/or imperfections which i dont want (oblong stars, blurry shots, etc). At this point i put all good shots in CS5 auto HDR merge tool. I find this does a very quick and quite good job of aligning all the images and producing a very clean image. I then export from photoshop as a 32bit TIFF and import into lightroom for cropping and editing. The only reason I import to lightroom to edit is because i know it better.
Any astrophotographers with helpful tips please share as Eric did above.
Scott- I think you are asking why iso 6400. Because I am willing to allow a little more noise to get more detail in the nebula. And when you start stacking images the noise becomes less of an issue. And when using higher end FX DSLR's your noise performance is quite good in the first place. See the following link about stacking images and how it eliminates noise.
I am just assembling my astrophoto gear, and have an Orion 8" reflector on an EQ mount, I imagine the same you have, and also a D700. With the current set up i am not able to achieve prime focus on the camera backplane mounting directly to the focuser with the t-ring; i suspect i need to get about about 1-2 cm closer to the tube. i have found a low-pro focuser on Orion's website, but am not convinced it will get me close enough. what is your configuration wrt the focuser, or are you shooting through an eyepiece?
great pic, and looking forward to more. hopefully i will be able to post some calibration photos soon!
