ASTRO: M106 in LRGB + Ha (9 hours exposure)

For the past two nights I've been gathering up photons for an image of M106
in LRGB + Halpha.

Using the AP155 and ST10XME, I took a total of 9 hours exposures on the
nights of the 7th and 8th of March. That was 5 hours of Halpha and 4 hours
of LRGB. It would have been nice to have had better seeing and less moon,
but I managed to get something anyway:


http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/..._lrgb_page.htm

Beautiful! I am a bit of a newbie at Astronomy in general and
astro-photography in particular. Could you briefly describe what
software/process you followed to combine the various exposures you took?


"Richard Crisp" wrote in message
. com...
For the past two nights I've been gathering up photons for an image of
M106
in LRGB + Halpha.

Using the AP155 and ST10XME, I took a total of 9 hours exposures on the
nights of the 7th and 8th of March. That was 5 hours of Halpha and 4 hours
of LRGB. It would have been nice to have had better seeing and less moon,
but I managed to get something anyway:


http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/..._lrgb_page.htm

"Richard Crisp" wrote in message
. com...
For the past two nights I've been gathering up photons for an image of M106
in LRGB + Halpha.
Using the AP155 and ST10XME, I took a total of 9 hours exposures on the
nights of the 7th and 8th of March. That was 5 hours of Halpha and 4 hours
of LRGB.
http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/..._lrgb_page.htm

Pretty impressive!!

--
M Stewart
Milton Keynes, UK
www.megalith.freeserve.co.uk/oddimage.htm
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/ms1938/

"..." wrote in message
. ..
Beautiful! I am a bit of a newbie at Astronomy in general and
astro-photography in particular. Could you briefly describe what
software/process you followed to combine the various exposures you took?


thanks.

Well I use Maxim DL to capture and process my data. I took 6 exposures
through each filter (LRGB) and 12 exposures through my Hydrogen Alpha
filter. The exposures through the LRGB filters were 10 minutes each, with
all the colors binned 2x2. The luminance was binned 1x1 and so was the Ha
filter.

The Ha shots were either 20 minutes or 30 minutes, I had 6 of each.

I then median combined the data within a particular filter. For the 2x2
binned color, I then upsampled to double the size. For the final Luminance I
summed the Lum data and the Ha data. For the final Red data I summed the Red
filter data and the Ha data.

I used DDP to highlight the faint details and then did final adjustments and
tweaks with Photoshop CS.





"Richard Crisp" wrote in message
. com...
For the past two nights I've been gathering up photons for an image of
M106
in LRGB + Halpha.

Using the AP155 and ST10XME, I took a total of 9 hours exposures on the
nights of the 7th and 8th of March. That was 5 hours of Halpha and 4
hours
of LRGB. It would have been nice to have had better seeing and less
moon,
but I managed to get something anyway:


http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/..._lrgb_page.htm