February 2010 AstroPhotography Contest Winners:
Three Way TIE!
NGC2237 - Rosette Nebula by Paramount
M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy by mamill
Flame and Horse Head by Doug

NGC2237 - Rosette Nebula by Paramount
Hi
Here is my entry for February, it is of NGC2237 - Rosette Nebula in Monoceros. It is a narrow band image using the HST palette with 6x20 minutes each of Ha and OIII and 3x20 minutes of SII, mapped so that SIIHaOIII = RGB. It was taken in one night with the Takahashi FSQ106ED, Starlight Xpress H36 and Astrodon 5nm NB filters. The mount was a Paramount ME and auto guiding was done with a lodestar on an OAG using 5 second guiding exposures
Thanks for looking
Best wishes
Gordon

M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy by mamill
My entry - M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - located in Ursa Major. Taken with a Takahashi FS102 @ f6; Starshoot Pro V1; Captured in Nebulosity and guided with PHD on a G11 mount. 12x15m subs, processed in Photoshop CS2. this is a cropped version of a widefield image (can be found in the Images Forum)

Flame and Horse Head by Doug
Photographer:
Doug Hubbell

Object's Name:
NGC2024 Flame Nebula (Horse Head) Including Alnitak and
Alnilam (Two of the three bright stars in Orion's belt)

Date Captured:
2/14/2010 and 2/15/2010

Equipment Used:
EON72, TRF-2008, F/11.4 Guide Scope, SSAG, and Atlas Mount.

Capture Software Used:
MDLE

Capture settings (duration, # frames, etc):
10 Minute Frames, 41 Total Frames taken, used 85% of the best frames, for a total exposure time of 5 hours 40 Minutes.

Processing Software Used:
MDLE
Deep Sky Stacker
Nebulosity
Fits Liberator
Photoshop CS2

Stepwise Description of Processing Technique:
Darks, and Flats were subtracted in MDLE
Converted RAW to Color in MDLE
Stacked Color Frames in DeepSkyStacker.
Used Sigma Clip stacking method.
Took STACKED image in Nebulosity, and separated the RGB channels into individual files (three).
Opened each FITS files in Photoshop with the FITS liberator plug-in.
Used an ArcSinh(x) stretch function with Auto Scaling.
After each (RGB) frame was opened in Photoshop...
I combined each channel into a NEW RGB Photoshop file.
While in Photoshop...
I used MANY CURVES iterations!
http://myastroimages.com/Astro_Imaging_ ... op_Curves/
I used Levels too.
Used Noel Carboni's Action Tool Kit:
"Local Contrast Enhancement"
"Enhance DSO and Reduce Stars"
Used Annie's Astro Actions 2.0:
“Enhance Galaxy Dust Lanes”.
I also used Photoshop's "Match Color" to enhance colors.

Additional Comments:
I saved each layer as I processed in photoshop, this shows the results of each step applied in sequence. Download 4MB, contains 17 jpg images. “flame_steps.zip”
http://tinyurl.com/yck6g8m

View the full sized image here:
http://tinyurl.com/yerg2vq