AIC 2010 day three started off with a fine breakfast. The food is definitely upgraded. Two presentations this morning.

First was Al Kelly talking about the importance of proper color balance in your source data, and using G2V stars to calculate it. A significant point he made was that an after the fact Multiplier correction is not enough to fix a big difference in color balance in source data because the signal to noise ratio won’t match. To calculate the balance, pick a high G2V star, take 5 short images of each color each color, dithering, calibrate, register, and stack with a mean combine. Measure the flux of the star (Maxim, AIP) and use this to calculate the balance.

The second talk was Martin Pugh speaking about High Definition Imaging. Strong emphasis was put on on equipment optimization. Use CCDStack FWHM measurement to pick best frame for the master for all subsequent aligns. And most of all, discard bad data! As others have Suggested, increase the contrast of a and b in the Lab color space to increase saturation. I also learned that there is a Photoshop edit log you can turn on in preferences. That will record all of your image edits.

Both of these presentations, in fact all of the presentations, will be worth looking at later once they are posted.

Many good door prizes were handed out—thanks to the sponsors. And you must be present to win!