finally a good astro photo

i finally got what i consider a good astro phot from the remote telescopes ive been playing around with
this is m20 also know as the trifid nebula.
its a total exposure time of 48 minutes,then post processed in photoshop elements as well as a special program for processing telescope pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdking647/5588553073/>http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdking647/5588553073/>m20 by http://www.flickr.com/people/rdking647/>rdking647, on Flickr

i have been following your astrophotos on flickr, how are you doing that?

i set up an account with lightbucket.com they have some large (up to 24" telescopes) in the new mexico desert.. You buy points that can be used to set up an imaging run. each point is about a buck and each scope costs a certain amount of points /hour

what i do is pick a target,in this case m-20. I pick the scope I want to use,in this case a 14.5" scope..
Then i decide how I want to take the shot and what filter to use.. More astrophotos the camera is actually black and white so i take the image through 4 different filters.
1 is an unfiltered "luminance" shot that is black and white. the other 3 are through red green and blue filters.
For astrophotos its better to take multiple shorter exposures rather than 1 long exposure. for this photo I took 3 shots under each filter and 3 shots with out any filter. each shot was 4 minute long,so I have 12 minute exposures for each of the 4 colors or 48 minutes total
after the images are shot I download them to my computer.. They are in a special format called an FIT file which is a telescope standard.. I have a progrram I run that can read FIT photos. I use that program to align and combine each set of images so I have 4 "masters" A Luninance and a ged,green and blue master. The program then will let me combine them into a full color photo. I then take the photo and use photoshop elements to bring out the colors more.

The telescopes also have other filters that can be used to brink out more color .

The precessing Im doing is actually the easy processing. There are more in depth methods that involve calibrating the photos for background noise and things like that but Im not at the level where i know how to do that. the amount of data I get in the photo package I download is enormous. The FIT files come to me in a 350MB zip file.. the actual processed file is 50mb before I turn it into a JPG.

The only problem is the cost.. the telescopes are research grade scopes and arent cheap. The m-20 photo is on a scope that costs $40/hour to rent and the total telescope time including setting up and moving the scope,etc was a about 75 minutes for a total cost of about $50

Im very new at taking these kind of shots so Im learning as I go along.. My goal is to eventually get a good enough shot that i can blow up into a decent sized picture to print out and frame

further nebula edits
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdking647/5590041402/>
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdking647/5590041402/>m20 - Version 2 by http://www.flickr.com/people/rdking647/>rdking647, on Flickr