Paul Holdsworth

Stunning Peter the depth of the image is fabulous 👍 Paul

Love the colour palette especially with the hint of green still left in there 👍 Paul

Hi all, here is my start on the wizard nebula from Friday night just 3 hours of 5 min subs. I imaged this target a couple of years ago using a stock dslr with limited success so thought it was worth trying again with my 294 mc pro. Even though it's limited integration so far I think it's more promising this time. Cheers Paul

That's a stunning image of M31 in my opinion. So much galaxy detail and the stars look excellent to me 👍

Thank you Bryan . Yes I'm pleased with how the composition turned out and that I've learnt something new 👍 Paul

Hi all, here's my first attempt at a mosaic. This is a four panel mosaic of the veil consisting of just 1 hour per panel so it's definitely short on integration but I wanted just to try one to see how it's done. I used the mosaic planning method in telescopius to import the coordinates into the asi air and then stacked and stitched in astro pixel processor which was easier than I thought. This is my third year in astro photography so kind of at that point where I want to try and learn new things.......now I know how it's done I'll try more and invest the time needed to do them justice. This was more about learning how to do one than anything else Cheers Paul

Superb images Phil

Absolutely stunning !

Hi all, here's my final image of the lion nebula for this year . This is now just over 10.5 hrs of 5 min subs of what I think is a really challenging target both in terms of brightness and data processing. I would say the final three of hours on Thursday ( in good conditions) has made a little bit of difference to the amount of OIII coming through but was probably expecting more . I'm going to keep all my subs and have made a note of the angle of rotation for framing if I do indeed go back to it sometime. I think it's one of those you could easily spend 20+ hours on for marginal gains . Overall though despite it being a bit of a challenge for my set up I'm pleased I've got an image of it . In my opinion you can definitely see how it got it's name ! Cheers Paul

I personally prefer the first one with a hint of green in there. Both are superb but with that touch of green left in it appears to give it more depth. Paul

Hi all, here's my effort so far on the lion Nebula SH2-132 ( this is definitely work in progress !). I couldn't find too many one shot colour images of the Lion nebula online.............turns out for a good reason !! I think given this is so faint in parts it's probably best suited to a mono set up in my opinion. However after 6.5 hours so far there is some oxygen coming through so will persevere when there's little to no moon. I've not spent too much time on processing so needs more star reduction etc etc when I get to a final image . It does look a nice target but it's a challenge for a OSC camera and a L enhance or L extreme . Cheers Paul

Beautiful image of the lion nebula 👍

Very nice image 👍

Hi all, here's my effort on the Elephant trunk nebula . I got 3 hours last night which I've combined with 6 hours from last year when I was using just a stock dslr. I must admit I had some challenges in combining the data due to differences in camera rotations etc and is therefor heavily cropped. Going forward I will probably discount any previous dslr subs I have and start from fresh but worth a try just this once. Cheers Paul

Thanks you yes the OIII has come through nicely & I must admit I'd not even seen the soap bubble bottom right. Regarding the stars I'm pretty sure it's because I was too aggressive with the morphological transformation tool in pixinsight . 👍

Thanks Graeme, yes 7 hours definitely brings out the OIII

Hi all, here's my image of NGC 6888 the Crescent nebula. This 7 hours of 5 minute subs finished on Saturday night using a zwo 294 mc pro and the optolong L extreme filter. I've started spending a bit more time on polar alignment with the asi air pro and getting it down to just a few arc seconds which does seem to improve the guiding to around 0.6 on average though never seems to get any better than that. I think the image lacks a little bit of contrast which maybe down to no astronomical darkness but even though conditions could be better I don't like to pass up a clear night ! The files have been stacked in astro pixel processor and processed in pixinsight and photoshop. Cheers Paul

Hi all, this is 4 hours of 5 min subs this week on the North America nebula. If I'm honest I was in two minds whether to bother given no astronomical darkness but the lure of two clear nights in a row got me ! Despite the conditions I still had fun, got something to process and can always add better data later. Cheers Paul

Here you go Chris. I should have mentioned I would normally add a bit of convolution to the game script mask to take away any sharp edges which I didn't do on your data but I would do that to hide where the mask has been. https://youtu.be/_ddHNpCIKo8 Hope this is of some use Regards Paul

Hi Chris, just had a quick look at your data and done some processing in pixinsight. There is a bit of the blue shell starting to come through from what I can see . I've rotated it but that's just a personal preference. The work flow I used was ABE, SCNR, Colour calibration, Noise x terminator, EZ soft stretch, Star x terminator, Star reduction (morphological) Colour mask (red) , GAME script which is the bit that picked up the blue shell, Game script mask , curves and put the stars back. Hope this is of some use. I'll try find the you tube tutorials for the game script and send the to you if you like ? Cheers Paul

Thanks Adrian will definitely give this a try for sure. Cheers Paul

Thanks guys. Yes busted with the clone stamp !! It was just one of those images where I seemed to have halos everywhere so tried to rescue the image with the clone stamp.......obviously got a bit carried away ! I definitely think there's an issue with the L xtreme filter paired with my 294 mc pro regarding halos which doesn't even contain itself to just the brightest stars. I guess it's possible I didn't get a good copy of the filter. thanks for taking the time to comment. Cheers Paul

Thanks Adrian, I processed this pretty much entirely in pixinsight. I did the usual crop, automatic background extraction, colour calibration, noise exterminator, soft stretch, star exterminator , star reduction, split the channels, pixel math for a fake sulphur channel, re combined as LRGB, Colour masks for stretching individual colours, unsharpmask for sharpening then over into light room for a bit of finishing. Out of the processes that has introduced the artefacts I would guess it's the new noise exterminator script that I've not used correctly though I have to say I'm impressed with its noise reduction capabilities.......of course it could be star reduction that's caused it. Thanks for your help Adrian and will definitely play around with some settings when I put together a final image for this one. Many thanks Paul

Hi just thought I'd post my start on the tulip nebula. This is just 2.5 hours of 5 min subs from the other night so it's a bit soft until I get more data. There does appear to be a fair amount of signal for such a short integration so guessing it must be a fairly bright target. Not sure why but for some reason I had massive star halos around quite a few stars but this was first time out since the middle of March so maybe I need to go around everything and give it a good old tighten! However I do think the L extreme filter does seem to suffer more from halos than my L enhance. Anyway it was just nice to be out imaging again and it seemed ages since I posted anything so here's a work in progress of the tulip nebula Cheers Paul

Thank you for your kind comments. Hopefully will get triple the data on it this year..............only challenge by then is remembering how I arrived at this colour palette 😅 Cheers Paul