Date/time: July 12, 2008 12:45am
Location: Victoria Center Observatory, Observatory Hill, Victoria, BC

This is a test image which is processed differently from the adjacent image with the same title. I took the 48 bit TIF imag from the ImagesPlus result, and finished the processing in a different manner. My goal was to reduce the noise in the centre of the original resultant image. This was accomplished by reducing the size of the bloated stars, and replacing a midtone stretch with an increase in colour saturation

This image shows a great deal of filamentary detail, has a darker background and more saturated colours that the other image. I like it better, but I'm always a sucker for dark backgrounds with star fields - not always a good idea, since there is certainly a loss of faint stars as compared with the previous processing attempt.

Camera: Hutech-modified Canon XTi dSLR mounted prime focus
Telescope: Meade LX200 14" SCT operating at f/6.3, mounted on a Paramount ME
Exposure: 2 minutes
Frames: 30
ISO: 800

Processing:

• ImagesPlus 3.0: digital RAW to FITS development; dark & flat frames applied; visual grading indicated no bad images (4 grade B images used); manual alignment using shift & rotate; average used to combine images; fairly aggressive digital development (BP 800); applied aggressive star size reduction.
• ACDSee Pro 2 Photo Manager: 48 bit to 24 bit RGB conversion; cropping; colour balance check; colour saturation increase; image size reduction, conversion to tif.