a8fall11Gallery

Amanda's Comet Girradd - Four Five minute exposures were taken with the 8 inch meade ldx75 telescope st4000 camera, on September 20, 2011 at 9:17 pm. The sky was clear, and dark which made for a great shot of Girradd. Each image was dark frame corrected, and colorized using DDP. All 4 images were stacked using RegiStax. The first attempt at stacking came out blurry, so I chose another focal point star closer to the comet for alignment. After stacking, I used Photoshop to correct the coloring. I used the Curves tool to get the correct colors, and balance. I used the enhanced DSO action, and the Removing Space Noise tool to make the photo more clear. I then cropped the photo to remove a black spot in the lower left corner of the shot. I then used the Curves tool again to make the sky a little darker, and pull out the comet's tail a bit more, and remove the green colors that were surrounding the entire photo. Finally, I used the clone stamp to remove 2 dust spots on the photo.

Ben's - no info supplied

Cory Banuelos: The Helix Nebula NGC 7293. Taken 9/20/11 at 10:08:59. three 300 second exposure. 8 inch meade ldx75 telescope st4000 camera. Chip temperature -20c. In DDP used contrast box to change photo to 1.2, dark frame corrected, and contrast box to auto fix colors do this 3 times. Registax stacked the 3 photos together setting the alignment to 128, default alignment, and 0 lowest quality. Then selected the brightest star near nebula to give that the area to stack upon. The stacked images were then edited in photoshop 7 using the actions: make stars smaller, space noise reduction, and enhance dso and reduce stars. Then went into light and curves darkened the brightnesses and then moved into greens and brought the green level to neutral. Then moved to hue and saturation and made balances and increasing the red. Used brightness and contrast to lower brightness darken sky and increase contrast to increase the difference in color seeing of nebula. Went back to light and curves and made the final adjustments.

Devin's shot - no info supplied except this:

"Devin's rendition of the dumbbell nebula located in the constellation Vulpecula. Shot was taken late September on the 8" scope. There was a suprisingly minuscule amount of noise and great clarity. The light pollution played an effect but not as bad as many of the other nights. THis shot clearly depicts the 'Dumbbell' high in the night sky."

Marlec's - no info supplied