"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
...
It fully saturated in 5 minutes. Surprised me but virtually the entire
size you see in this photo is at 65000+ count. Figured at 1x1 binning that
wouldn't happen that fast but it did. Even the red frames are fully
saturated and it shouldn't have all that much red in it. I guess I need
to learn how to blend in a short exposure of just the center part. Even
some parts of the inner nebula were close to saturation, over 50K count.

Rick



here's what I would recommend if you are wanting to do it as RGB:

shoot it at 3 minutes and see what you get. Stop at an exposure time that
gives you about 55K ADU or slightly lower in the bright portion. I would
guess that time would be between 2.5 and 3.5 minutes

then increase the number of exposures you take. You can build signal if you
take a lot of exposures and use a short enough exposure that things don't
get saturated.

When I last imaged that object I used my 18" scope and emission line filters
so 20 minute exposures were not saturating stars

the first night I shot it in Halpha and had really nice seeing but by the
time I could get clear skies again for shooting with the other filters, it
was total mush

http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/ngc..._6303_page.htm

I used the same optics as in my 18" Stinger 450 classical cassegrain but had
them in the predecessor frame from Resource International which has
subsequently been sold.








Richard Crisp wrote:

looks fun Rick

I think you could back off a tad on the stretching to prevent the central
star from saturating. it isn't saturated in the FIT data is it?

if not, then you could mask off the star and select everything else wiht
a bit of feather and probably get the stretching done without slamming
the star against the rails


"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
...

NGC 2392: Another lost on the drive from over a couple months ago.
Probably a bit too processed. Didn't look like it in the Lum frame but
when I added the color it seems too harsh. With Photoshop nearly an
hour's drive away it will have to stay this way for now. Hadn't worked
at 1x1 binning for a while. See I'm out of collimation. Another
project. Rather short exposures as I had to throw most frames out due
to horrid seeing that would roll by then clear up. I picked the best 6
lum and 3 each of color though the red frames were all lousy.

14" LX200R @ f/10, 6x2Lum 3x2RGB each binned 1x1 at half frame,
STL-11000M, Paramount ME

Rick