MikeODay

Wonderful colours and you have done a great job keeping colour in these very bright stars whilst also capturing so many faint ones. I have not noticed in photos before that so many stars can be found in the Coal-sack. Well done!

Lovely image - I really like the composition and the colours.

Congratulations Rodd - a well deserved recognition for a lovely image.

Wonderful image Sara - I love the colours and the detail you have brought out in the IFN. Well done!

Thanks for that. Cheers Mike

Thanks for that! I am quite pleased with the way it turned out. Although ... The colour balance was a challenge and I'm still not sure it is "correct" - the problem I had is that there is no neutral area that I could use as a reference to remove the light pollution. Even the dark areas are really red! Also, looking at other deep images, I think that the blue tint at the far left is not due to reflection of blue star light from interstellar material :) - I think it is probably due to the very strong stretch of the dark tones bringing out atmospheric flare from the bright star just out of frame - there must have been more dust/vapour in the air than I thought; it looked clear! Cheers Mike

updated ( slight tweak to colour balance, a little brighter and tad more contrast )

Thanks Rodd. I find it hard sometimes to set the right contrast - I calibrate my monitor for colour but the contrast is very different between my monitor and IPAD.

Lovely images Rodd - I like the colours and detail is wonderful.

Lovely image - I really like the composition.

Thanks Rodd Here is a further tweak. What do you think, better or have I over done it? Cheers Mike

Cheers Carole - yes I imagine that it is quite low in the sky for you!

The Cat's Paw Nebula ( NGC 6334 ) in Scorpius updated ( slight tweak to colour balance, a little brighter and tad more contrast ) ( please click / tap on image to see larger and sharper - a full size image can be seen here ) ...... original: ( please click / tap on image to see larger and sharper - a full size image can be seen here ) ……………………... Also known as the Bear Claw Nebula, NGC 6334 is an emission nebula near the scorpion's tail in the Scorpius constellation. Image details: Image centre ...... RA: 17 20 08.185 Dec: -35 52 30.91 Field of view ..... 57' 37.8" x 38' 51.8" Rotation .......... 0.00 deg ( North is up ) Resolution ........ 0.586 arcsec/px Telescope: Orion Optics CT12 Newtonian ( mirror 300mm, fl 1200mm, f4 ). Corrector: ASA 2" Coma Corrector Quattro 1.175x. Effective Focal Length / Aperture : 1470mm f4.7 Mount: Skywatcher EQ8 Guiding: TSOAG9 Off-Axis-Guider, Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2, PHD2 Camera: Nikon D5300 (unmodified) (sensor 23.5 x 15.6mm, 6016x4016 3.9um pixels) Location: Blue Mountains, Australia Moderate light pollution ( pale green zone on darksitefinder.com map ) Capture ( July 2018 ) 6 sets of sub-images with exposure duration for each set doubling ( 4s to 240s ) all at ISO 250. 168 x 4 min frames plus ~10 frames each for the shorter exposures Processing: Calibration: bias, dark and flat Integration in 8 sets HDR combination Pixinsight July 2018

Congratulations guys, well deserved

The process you describe sounds right. By the way, In the past when I tried stacking the different channels it did not make much a difference. In the recent experiment I turned on the option of distortion correction. I suspect that this may have helped.