How to retrieve this?

[Perkil8r]

Ok, I've been faffing around all day, backwards and forwards trying to process my images from last night. I stacked them with DSS and got as far as the first one below where I left everything as it came out. The second one is from this mornings re-stack with more frames, this time with the RGB histograms aligned.

First one was best 60% of: 10 x 5 secs, 10 x 10 secs, 10 x 20 secs plus equal darks and 2 x bias all @ ISO 400

Second is best 80% of the same.

I've tried stretching the histograms etc, altering curves but can't get it looking anything like. I keep getting glimpses of some good detail in there. Certainly the first one seems to show the trapezium a lot better when adjusted, but the rest looks boring. The second looks better but the core is washed out big time.

The one thing I did figure was that the white balance on the camera was set to custom, I've seen some sites suggest that it should be set to Tungston, will this make a difference?

If anybody can tweek the above, please feel free to have a crack at it. At least then I've got something to aim at.

I'm using Photoshop Cs5 Extended version, the camera is a modded 350D. If the weather holds up tonight I intend getting more data at Tungston setting, and I'm going to try and get the trapezium nearer to the centre of the original frame, the above are cropped.

Damn! posted wrong 2nd picture! 2nd piture above is my attempt from the other day with a lot less subs, no darks, no bias and a non modded 300d. See post below circa 23.20 13/03/12

Edited March 13, 2012 by Perkil8r

[Guest Kheldar]

You've got good colour for the relatively small amount of data you have captured.

More subs, lots more subs, get over an hour at least to start with.

[Perkil8r]

I'm building up slowly taking one step at a time. I'm struggling to get the above looking anything like though. Is there more to fetch out of those above do you think? Every now and then I get glimpses of loads of detail, but usually when the picture is way too red. In the two above I've done nothing except stack them, the second one I aligned the colour's histograms in DSS but nothing else. I've only cropped them so that the main area of interest is as big as is sensible within the attatchment, if you follow what I mean.

The only time I get to having some nice detail the picture looks too saturated, usually with red, or the core goes virtually white. I'm interested to know if more can be done with them, or if I'm wasting my time trying to get more out of them. I did have to ditch 10 x 30 sec subs due to star trails, I think my alignment was slightly off, possibly as a result of the neighbours popping round for a squint before I started imaging.

[Perkil8r]

I posted the wrong image above! The one below is from this stacking and has a lot less colour.

[Perkil8r]

And after a day of messing, deleting, messing, deleting and so on, all I get is this poor effort :-(

[+Graham]

Mike I like that one it looks just like a phinix.

[Perkil8r]

Figured it out after another attempt last night, the seeing was poor when I did this one, last night I got a lot more detail from less data! Just goes to show the importance of the seeing.