silentrunning

The script can be found here with some excellent others... http://www.skypixels.at/pixinsight_scripts.html

Since star processing seems to be the order of the day I have had a bash myself, see post...

I've been developing my own star removal/reduction process and thought I would post the results. I'm working on my recent limited data set of IC5070, part of the pelican nebula. This is first image I figured I would try and do something with the stars, I've never bothered in the past. I've looked at various things out there like Stratton and Starnet but ultimately I wanted something that is guaranteed to identify stars at all mags and not all sorts of other things. The only way to do this is by using star catalogue information and Pixinsight has an incredible script called MaskGen that will take a plate solved image and generate a star mask based on things like magnitude range using catalogues such as GAIA which go extremely faint. On this image I generated three star masks for the magnitude ranges bright-15, 15.1-17 and 17.1-19 so I I included probably all of the stars in my image. I then loaded these and the original image into Affinity. By generating star selection layers based on the star masks and applying Affinity's Inpainting tool to the underlying original image I was able to remove all the stars without the sort of artefacts that Dust and Scratches creates and reintroduce the three levels stars by turning on and off the layers. To each star layer I can apply any processing I choose such as minimal blurring to reduce the size of the stars. I only needed this on the brightest layer for the result I was after, although I'm far from finished. I have not applied any other processing but with the stars removed I should be able to achieve for example some clean nice Hubble pallet effects and edge sharpening without effecting the stars. The images show the result for combinations of layer visibility. 1. This is the original image 2. All star layers turned off... 3. The faintest mag 17-19 stars reintroduced, they are there! 4. With the 15-17 mag stars added in... 5. With the brightest stars added in with a minimal blur applied to keep them nice and small... Here's the full image with the stars removed...

I know what you mean Carol. I absolutely love the aquamarine of the Oxygen but haven't changed the hue other than what results from a few adjustments on the way to Hubble. I might have some fun and play around with some changes to specific hues.

As others have done I've gone ahead and processed less data than I would have liked because astrodark has now all but gone - something else to blame rather than the usual weather issues! This is 16x600s Ha and 10x600s O and S. I was heading down the Hubble pallet route but found the resulting blue just to overpowering in this image which has a wide expanse of oxygen. At times it felt more like art than science processing this incredible area with these colours. I haven't done much with the stars as I am looking at and working on star removal/reduction techniques so if I find a way that works for me I'll rework it and repost.

Cracking image. Great vibrancy. Seems we are all working on star removal/reduction methods.

Love that Martin, great colours. I tried this once and know how tricky this object is.

Lovely image Adam of one of my favourite objects.

Another super image Carol. I'm seriously looking at that Samyang!

Great image. I started imaging this cluster a while back but abandoned it for some reason, probably didn't see anything!

Wow, that is amazing, just look at those lumps dripping off and dropping back the surface. Great work.

That is stunning! The colors are to die for and to think that's taken from your London location makes it even more remarkable. Great image.

Thanks Martin. I was just about to embark on another processing effort to try and render the gold of the HST but I don't think i'll bother now. 🙂

Thanks Bob.

I'm excited for you! It's been a while since I bought any new major components to my set up but I guess that's a good thing 🙂

When's it due?

Thanks. This was with the GSO 12" RC, the QHY11 camera and Baader filter.

Thanks Geoff, I had to work on zoomed in areas as the amount of detail was literal giving me a headache!

This is 16 x 600s Subs 2x2 in OIII and SII and 16 x 600s 1x1 in Ha combined as SHO. Acquired over the last 3 nights with a total integration time of 8 hours representing the most I've ever got on one object - pathetic I know. It so much easier to process with more data, I really most make the effort to stay at least 6 hours on each target. I've probably spent at least that amount of time playing with the look and feel of this, i can't seem to get the gold look that makes the Hubble pallet so appealing. Also included is a detail from the main image with possibly a more appealing framing to it.

Whoaaa, yeah for me that looks better. I would also try to remove a little of the purple from the background although I know how near impossible it is to identify true "space" in such a nebulous area. Not criticisms in anyway more personal taste, it's a gorgeous image. I look forward to your comments on my Butterfly neb that I'll be posting shortly. 🙂

That has come out fantastic Carol. Can't fault that although my own personal preference is for a slightly darker background. Cracking image.

Wow that is stunning Carol. Well done on the acquisition and the processing!

Wow, add some decent colour to that and it's gonna be a real cracker.

Very nice image I could have sworn there was some Ha subs in the mix, the Ha regions are a popping!

That looks great Geof, really nice deep image with great colors.