First colour image from new obsy

[RikM]

I was in two minds whether to post this or not. It needs loads more exposure time to clean up the noise but I am quite happy with how it is progressing.

This is with a 150P Newtonian, SXV-H9 with Baader filters on an NEQ6 with a QHY5 finderguider.

Capture, guiding, stacking and colour combination with MaximDL. Making it look pretty with Photoshop CS3 (with Gradient Xterminator, HLVG! and Noel's actions plug-ins)

So far, the luminance has 175min in 5min and 7.5min subs.

This is the first time I have tried weighted colour exposures rather than equal exposures for each colour and applying the weightings at the colour combine stage. I used 7x 300sec red; 7x 420sec green; 7x 350sec blue and then combined at 1:1:0.95. Nex data I will use 330sec for blue. I would typically balance the histogram using the levels tool but I didn't need to in this case. I have made some selective colour adjustments to reduce the reddening normally seen from dust extinction etc.

I would love some pointers for how I can reduce the oversaturation at the edges of my stars and get more even colour distribution across the star but without loosing the brightness. I have done a bit of work with selective curves to tighten up the stars and reduce the 'haze' around them but if there is some secret to getting good stars I would love to hear it.

[johnrt]

This is absolutely excellent Rik, this is by no means an easy target - I threw about 17 hours of 10 minute subs at it and didn't manage to get near cracking it.

[Spikey]

Looks very good mate, especially considering the exposure time.

[Daniel-K]

Rik thats a stunner! maybe lift the red abit to bring out the brown dust in the core? i think your stars look fine

[RikM]

Rik thats a stunner! maybe lift the red abit to bring out the brown dust in the core? i think your stars look fine

Cheers Dan. I have had a quick play with the jpg offline and it does give it a contrast boost. I will have a proper go at the tiff when I get home tonight

[RikM]

This is absolutely excellent Rik, this is by no means an easy target - I threw about 17 hours of 10 minute subs at it and didn't manage to get near cracking it.

Thanks John. It was your fab image that had me doubting mine was ready to post. I am going to keep adding to this and hopefully get the same smoothness in the blue that you managed.

[Scott]

I don't know Rik, If you didn't get another minutes data it'd still be an image to be proud of (well it would be for me anyway). 

Thanks for sharing

[RikM]

I have had a bit of a go at the dust lane detail and increased the brightness while slightly decreasing saturation in the red stars. I can do loads of things that make it worse. At least these tweaks don't seem to have done any harm but I am not sure if there is a noticeable improvement. I think I have wrung all I can get out of the exposure time.

[purdo]

Lovely image.

[nytecam]

Well done - Fab image and enough exposure to move on to more quarry :-)

[sologuitarist61]

Bweautiful image with restrained but lovely colours - great detail to!

[RikM]

After working through a Ken Crawford tutorial, I have given this a bit of a boost with the Shadows/Highlights tool.

[lensman57]

That is a great capture and this is a very difficult target to get and process. I also find that my stars show an oversaturated edge at times, perhaps a starmask with a large feather will help.

Regards,

A.G

[morimarty]

I'm glad you did post this image. its a real stunner excellent work!

[Uranium235]

Looks great Rik.

Re your star colour. If you are using maxim, combine your data into two versions - one standard LRGB, the other LAB colour.

Then, take the galaxy colour from the RGB version and paste that into the LAB version (RGB galaxy, LAB stars) using Ps.

I think maybe an individual star can also be selected (in Ps), feather the selection then do a radial blur, then increase the saturation a tiny bit. Might work, might not work.

[RikM]

I had a bit of a go at LAB combine Rob and it just blew all my stars. I think I must have the setting wrong. I never really tried changing the combine method but there were some interesting results, so I will come back to that in the future

I think I just need more than 30-40 min per colour. I have had my best results with pure RGB stars rather than LRGB but there isn't enough here for the RGB to stand up on its own. I am more and more convinced that the next step in my journey is 'time'.

[Uranium235]

Good to see you had a stab at LAB colour. It doesnt always work, and takes a little bit of messing around with to get it right (try changing the luminance weight) - but it gives you loads of saturation to play with when it does work.

One thing I did try last night was to load your image, use noels "select brighter stars", then feather the selection back a bit (2 or 3) - then use the "increase star colour" action. That seemed to increase the colour in the cores of the larger stars after two iterations. Its a bit of a slow process though, needs refining.

Or you could operate on individual stars, but that may take some time!

[Quatermass]

Lovely image Rick I remember doing this one last year not an easy target at all but yours has come out great.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[RikM]

I am now thoroughly fed up with this galaxy.

johnrt put 17 hours into his. Mine now has 16 hours and it's not getting any more for a little while at least. I did have one revelation during the processing, I used Registar to align all the subs and then Maxim just to do the calibration and stacking. Low and behold if I haven't got round stars, where they were all raggedy before I still need to work on getting a decent star profile, as I still end up with strongly coloured halos but I am much happier with them now.

Roughly 6hr luminance, 2 - 2.5 hr per colour RGB and 3hr Ha.

If anyone is interested in the actual sub count it is:

348 min  luminance (14x 300 sec , 37x 450 sec unbinned)

120 min red (24x 300 sec. unbinned)

161 min  green (7x 420 sec, 15x 450sec unbinned)

140 min blue (24x 350 sec. unbinned)

190 min Ha (2x 900 sec, 8x 1200 sec unbinned)

I am not sure if RGB weighted subs was much of a benefit in the long run. But I will try again with a more consistent run on something. It could be that equal sub length but unequal number of subs may be easier to deal with.

http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_426/gallery_5915_426_161170.jpg