Patrick, Do you have photoshop? There is a neat plugin called fits liberator that handles these fits files. I pulled it into photoshop using that plugin, then did no white or black clipping. I then got it into the photoshop work environment and just used the levels and curves tools to get the data out. The blacks were already pretty clipped, so in the levels tool, I used the middle slider and pulled it left to get the fainter stuff out. I never, ever, pull in the right slider as that clips the star data and blows out faint stuff quick. I then use the curves to add contrast and stretch a bit more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9MeGLiAk9A That is my stretching techniques. If you put it in 702p and full screen its easy to follow. Here it is processed: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3784&g2_imageViewsIndex=1 Not sure if that is any better than what you were able to get out. Cheers, and very cool image :) David On 9/14/2010 3:38 AM, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
The other night at SPOC Daniel mentioned Comet Hartely being in the sky. So tonight I thought I'd have a go at it when it was near the zenith.
Shot 10 one minute exposures tracking on the comet.
Applied dark and flat to each and then combined them.
As usual my image tweaking skill failed me and all I can come up with is a small bright coma.
So I've posted the combined but otherwise untweaked image here so maybe some of you with better skills than I can have a crack at it:
http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/103P-HARTLEY-01.FIT.ZIP
Cheers,
patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com