Narrowband IC410 Tadpoles reprocessed

[x6gas]

I've reprocessed the data of IC410 that I captured earlier in the year.

This is 24 x 600s Ha and 22 x 600s OIII - the OIII was captured using my FSQ-85 and the Ha combination of the Baby-Q and my TS90APO. I had somehow manged to combine the data using DSS earlier but couldn't get it to work reliably and so I ended up buying RegiStar to get the different field of views to combine properly.

Scopes: FSQ-85 and TS90APOc

Camera: Atik 460ex mono with Baader 2" filters

Guiding: Atik OAG, IMG0H, PHD

Mount: CG-5

Registered in RegiStar, stacked in DSS, and processed in PhotoPLus X4.

I've had trouble getting the colour balance right as there is a fair of mount of nebulosity in the background; I'd be really interested in comments as to which of the following looks best.

Thanks for looking!

[x6gas]

Or

[x6gas]

Or

[WaveSoarer]

Oh, I dunno. I quite like the first one. A really tremendous image by the way. I really like the group of young stars at the centre. It looks like they're in a nest.

[Martin-Devon]

I prefer the first one Ian, blues always come out well with narrowbands

[prokyon]

Great result, I prefer the 1st one.

[Anweniel]

Hard to plump for one as the fainter background nebula is improved with each attempt but I prefer the definition, contrast and colour in the first. Comes down to taste as it so often does.

Which do you prefer x6gas?

[x6gas]

Hard to plump for one as the fainter background nebula is improved with each attempt but I prefer the definition, contrast and colour in the first. Comes down to taste as it so often does.

Which do you prefer x6gas?

Well, I sort of prefer the second one but seeing it on here I think I could have tweaked it to increase the contrast just a tad. It is a tough one as the more of the background nebulosity that comes out (which I like), the less contrast in the main nebula...

I am quite new to imaging and certainly new to processing - I think that this is the third target that I've got reasonable data to play with... I find that I play around with various things but that I sometimes often go around in circles.

So here is another try. On this one I've applied the colour balance selectively, used the erosion routine in AstroArt to calm the background stars, and finished with a gentle high pass filter. I've also added a little stretch that looks overdone until I upload it to SGL...

[Gina]

That's lovely New to processing? You wouldn't think so - you must be learning very fast Great stuff

[LDUNN1]

Out of the top 3, my preference was no.1, but then I saw your rework of no.1 just above, now I can't make my mine up between those two!!! The reworked No.1 I think looks just a tad OTT, but I think it adds something over No.1 ........can I have a half way house between the two???? ;-)

It made me smile that you bought Registar to mix your different image scales. I ended up doing the same last year. Registar is good, but by accident, I found it can't handle mixed 'flipped' images. Somehow I ended up with data where one of my multiple sessions on a target had its images flipped vertically &/or horizontally from teh other data - Registar could not handle it. I 'think' the flip may have happen potentially at the fits liberator import as there is a tick box to 'flip' the image. Just telling you this as it took me an age to work out why Registar could not align & stack the data.

I've emailed the makers of Registar about this & they have contacted me back to say that they have put it on their task list for the next upgrade.

[x6gas]

Many thanks for all the comments.

May be the last version for now (though I have a few ideas to try on a full re-process...)

OK, possibly over sharpened but my judgement gets eroded as I go through the processing steps...

[Gina]

Certainly a wonderful and beautiful image, close to perfection I would say - I love it

[x6gas]

Thanks Lawrence, and thanks once again Gina.

Gina - you are very kind but a long way from perfection methinks! Blue haloes around the stars and I'd like the reddy-brown nebulosity to be more towards the gold / orange / yellow. Also annoyed with the line down the left side which just isn't there until I post to SGL

That said I am really happy with this, especially considering the data was captured in less than perfect conditions... The erosion filter in AstroArt does a great job of reducing the dominance of the star field while leaving the nebula intact and helps focus attention on the tadpoles, I think...

I got some SII data last night - again in less than idea conditions so may be able to do a proper Ha/OIII/SII process.

Thanks again everyone for the encouragement!

[johnrt]

You have captured some lovely data there. I like the last 2 the best, but I find all of them a little green. A quick run id SCNR in Pixinsight or Hasta la vista green in photoshop would really transform the result.

[x6gas]

Thanks John.

Yes the dreaded green is a common issue for my images on here although it doesn't look too bad on my monitor. It also doesn't present when I look at the images before uploading and the histogram gives no hint of the problem... I guess I need to learn how to set the colour balance so it looks OK on here...

[sologuitarist61]

Very nice!

[Stargazer33]

Your last go at processing is amazing! I didn't know you could get such images on a CG-5 mount. I thought you needed EQ6 mounts and the like. Now I really can't wait until we get some decent clear nights so that I can try out my new auto-guiding set-up.

Can't wait to see your next version of this nebula. Truly inspiring!

[x6gas]

Your last go at processing is amazing! I didn't know you could get such images on a CG-5 mount. I thought you needed EQ6 mounts and the like. Now I really can't wait until we get some decent clear nights so that I can try out my new auto-guiding set-up.

Can't wait to see your next version of this nebula. Truly inspiring!

Ah - it's a very underestimated mount is the CG-5!

To be fair, it is only carrying a pretty light short-tube refractor - your C8 is much more challenging because it is heavier and working at a longer focal length. Still - it can be done! The DEC axis on mine was very tight - for reasons best known to themseleves Synta tend to over-tighten the taper bearings and that can make performance of the DEC axis a bit lumpy. My CG-5 guides like a dream now, though, and I only tend to lose subs because of clouds rather than due to poor guiding...

Thanks for the nice comments, Bryan!