Hi all,

Well, I finally tried my hand at astroimaging with my Canon Rebel XTi. I snapped a few shots of the Orion Nebula and processed them with DeepSkyStacker. What I ended up with is a greyscale image of pretty much just the "core" of the nebula and the darkness around it. I can barely make out some of the nebulosity surrounding the core, but that too is in greyscale. Why is that? Does it seem like I didn't capture enough color for the software to use? Here's some of the technical stuff:

ISO 800, 30 second exposures
7 light frames, 3 dark frames, 3 offset/bias frames

I probably could've captured more detail with longer exposures, but the fact remains: why are my images coming out in greyscale. I processed the same seven frames in Registax and the final image came out in color.

Thanks in advance,

Joe
 

 When it loads the autosave image it looks like it is in grayscale. You need to save the image to whatever you want to name the image file. There are two ways to save the image, one way is with the changes applied to the saved image, and the other to save embeded changes without applying them. For processing the second is the best.
If you reload the autosaved image it will look different than what it does after it registers and stacks.. DSS is a powerfull stacking tool. There are so many ways to process and stack the images with it. I've been trying numerous combinatiions on each image then pick the best result to process. The same stacking parameters don't always work the same with each different image, so you will want to experiment a little..

Then when you review your saved image it will look darker, but all the image data is there, you just need to tweek it in post processing to bring it out.  I am using Photoshop Elements 6. I also bought Noel Carboni's astronomy tools to go along with it..

Have A Nice __________ 

As mentioned earlier, DSS is a very powerful program. But you still have to post-process the image  in Photoshop or similar program. A nother good place to ask is in the DSS Yahoo Group http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DeepSkyStacker/?yguid=94903827

Luc, the author is very good about answering questions and helping you get the most out of the program.

Did you shoot raw or Jpg? What were the stacking parameters etc...

Craig