The Eastern Veil

[jtlandreneau]

It was a chore suppressing the rich star field in way of this nebula, I hope it doesn't look too goofy because of it! Any comments or critique are welcome!

13x 600 seconds ISO800
modified Canon T3i
Orion 200mm f/4 newt
Orion EQ-G

http://www.astrobin.com/182067/B/

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice image, but I have a feeling the processing has been a bit too aggressive. Holding back a bit may get a more natural-looking image

[carastro]

Nice image but I agree with Michael, the sky background has been too severely processed, and you can see the contrast to the stars on the nebula.  

I have a feeling the way to process this image is to remove the stars altogether and process the nebula on it's own.  then reduce the star sizes before copying back onto the image.  

I have yet to manage this, but I have seen it done.

Take a look at this brilliant tutorial by Annie (of Annie's actions).

I know this tutorial is for a mono camera and filters, but you should be able to glean enough from it to deal with the star problem.  You should also be able to split your channels should you need to.  

http://www.eprisephoto.com/building-a-narrowband-image

Carole 

[jtlandreneau]

Thanks for the tips, I was worried that was the case, but I feel like people were being too polite to say something

This is the first shot I've taken that really needed the star field to be eliminated first, I'll take a look at that site and have another go!

[jtlandreneau]

I spent some time today trying to process the image better... quite tricky!

here's the (hopefully better!) results

[carastro]

I think that is a better process than the original.  In fact it's pretty darn good for a DSLR, I thought I was looking at a narowband image.

Carole 

[gorann]

I like both images, particularly as they are in striking contrast to my Veil nebula, which now looks like being caught in a snow storm. It is taken with an 80 mm apo refractor (single EOS 60Da shot) so the resolution in not as high as with your Newtonean (maybe also seeing was not as good). I am new to AP since this spring so I am eagerly trying to learn the tricks of the trade. What method did you use for suppressing stars?

[jtlandreneau]

I like both images, particularly as they are in striking contrast to my Veil nebula, which now looks like being caught in a snow storm. It is taken with an 80 mm apo refractor (single EOS 60Da shot) so the resolution in not as high as with your Newtonean (maybe also seeing was not as good). I am new to AP since this spring so I am eagerly trying to learn the tricks of the trade. What method did you use for suppressing stars?

Snowstorm is a good analogy! I've been telling my friends that the image would turn to "white noise" when trying to bring out the nebula... it's crazy how many stars are in the (milky) way

I'm new to the astronomy game too (I got my first telescope almost exactly a year ago). I've been goofing around with Pixinsight, though the starting process would be the same for photoshop - I did a star mask and morphological transformation (which is similar to the "minimum" filter in PS) as my first step before any color calibration and stretching. Later, when I had the nebula stretched how I liked, I did a heavy "dust and scratches" filter, then an inverse layer mask of the original image to smudge out most of the faint stuff. The biggest difference between the final picture and the first attempt was reducing the star field as the first step, rather than close to the last

thanks for the comments carastro!

[gorann]

Thanks for the tip regarding star reduction. I found a great set of Photoshop actions called Astronomy Tools Actions Set (version v1_6) from www.prodigitalsoftware.com. That allowed me to easily select the stars, which I subsequently minimized. The same Action Set also had a tool that adds fake diffraction spikes round refractor stars. Fake but fun. I post that version here. Still not the same fantastic resolution as your image. When it gets dark up here in Sweden in August, I will surely have a go at the Veil Nebula again, and then try my Skywatcher 250p Newtonean which I got in a package deal with my mount but have not used for imaging yet (then I can also forget about fake diffraction spikes).