Imaging The Heavens - Basic Processing 1

This is an example of basic processing

This is a single 200 second raw image of the Horsehead and flame nebula and this is how it would appear when downloaded to the laptop from the camera, all images appear in monochrome when they are downloaded and inverted both horizontally and vertically. For the purpose of this example I have inverted the image to its correct orientation. All images are downloaded as FITS files (Flexible Image Transport System), all images have been converted to JPEG for ease of incorporating into my site.

Single 200 second Raw image

Single 200 second Raw image

Stack of 22 Raw images

Stack of 22 Raw images

Curves and levels

Curves and levels

Defect Repair

Defect Repair

To help remove some of the noise reduction and make the image look a bit smoother I ran a single iteration of space noise reduction in Noel's tools (available as a download plug in for Photoshop CS2)

Noise Reduction

Noise Reduction

The final stage was just to tidy the image up by cropping the dark edges resulting from stacking.

Final Cropped Image

Final Cropped Image