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I reworked this using all 114 good lights I captured that night.

http://zoom.it/Ajr1#full

The extra frames seem to help with the fainter details.

Here is my latest M42

http://zoom.it/UaKB#full

and the story behind it is here

http://starrydave.com/?p=302

Dave

Another shot of M42 with my Canon point and shoot.

http://starrydave.com/?p=297

Great stuff Ivo - I know what to aim for now. I can't believe you turned my arrowheads into stars! You also picked out the very faint clouds.

Once I rework my latest images as per your workflow I will post them to the Nexstar group. There must be a lot of alt-az users who would love to try out DSOs.

Here's my question though; can you try processing the image in 1.3.5 beta? Its color module is greatly enhanced and should yield much better results - most definitely worth a shot! Will do. I also uploaded the M42 .FTS file here if any gurus want to give it a go. http://www.starrydave.com/images/M4...

admin wrote: May I ask which version of StarTools did you use ? How did you calibrate your colors?

ST v 1.3.3.224

Excuse my dumbness but I don't know how I calibrated. All I do is load the color module and move the sliders around until I am happy with the result.

Just an update on this. I reworked all the captures by cropping off about 300px around each image after AutoDev and it seemed to solve the Wipe problem. I also cut back on the blue levels and posted the best images here http://starrydave.com/?p=259 Even managed to get some of the elusive M45 nebulos...

Thanks Ivo, I haven't shot any flats yet but you were right about the stacking artifacts. I cropped the edges out after doing the AutoDev and that seems to have solved the problem. The artifacts were probably caused by field rotation due to the alt-az mount. I will now go thru the images again. Is i...

Thanks Ivo. I worked in a TV repair shop when color TV first came to Scotland. We would set the color balance up to be as natural as possible but people would then crank up the saturation after we left. I guess I am still in that mindset. One thing you can maybe help me with is that I seem to only b...

I just tried out my new Canon 1100D with 300mm zoom lens on my Nexstar 4SE alt-az mount and you can see the results here http://starrydave.com/?p=259 Nowhere near the quality of the deep sky gurus on here but I am very pleased with what Star Tools was able to produce using very basic equipment. My n...