IC410 - 23/24 Nov - Atik 16HR - Narrow Band Filters

[jcm]

130mm APO working at F4.8 , Atik 16HR , 90mins Ha , 80 mins OIII , 80 Mins H-Beta

This is my first propper go at narrow band imaging. The colours and alignment my be a bit "off" but at least this time I got 3 sets of images that I managed to align. The Moon was also very close , so I am quite pleased with the result. I hope now I can make some progress and show some improvement in this method of imaging.

Added second image. Processed differently , reduced red , star reduction routine.

John

[cygnusx1]

Nothing wrong with that John, nice colour and detail :thumbup:

[jcm]

Nothing wrong with that John, nice colour and detail :thumbup:

Thanks Kevin. The problems I am having is not taking the individual colour frames but the aligning and the subsequent combination and processing.The stars are more bloated in the final combined image than they are in the individual colour frames. Last night did not help as there was lots of haze as well as the moon. I suppose its " practice makes perfect"

John

[centroid]

That's a pretty good result for a first 'crack' John, or even a 2nd, 3rd or 4th........... come to that.

Far from ideal conditions too!!

Dave

[CELESCOPE]

Nice one John ,good image through that Moon , yup its a huge learning curve the narrow band , one i have to learn myself yet, glad to see u are off to agood start mate

Rog

[mpeniak]

Nice one jcm! Like the colour and also the detail.

Martin

[barkis]

I would be hard put to find anything that would improve on what you have there John. It looks mighty good to me, and If that was mine, I would feel I had achieved something great.

Ron.

[jcm]

I would be hard put to find anything that would improve on what you have there John. It looks mighty good to me, and If that was mine, I would feel I had achieved something great.

Ron.

Thanks for that , Ron. I have noticed other images which seem to have more " pinpoint " stars than mine. I just wonder if they run something to reduce the stars? May be Noels Actions? Last night the atmosphere was unsteady so I will reserve judgment for a while.

John

[CELESCOPE]

noels action will do this , but i use my own method John ,i can reduce them more is wanted John .

Rog

(click to enlarge)

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,5636.msg61480.html#msg61480

[jcm]

Hi Rog , thanks for the info. Next time I will reduce the stars after combining the subs for each colour. Then when I do the RGB part I should be starting with smaller stars. Well thats for another time. The present IC410 image will be a good base line for me to compare future attempts.

John

[CELESCOPE]

[centroid]

John

I find it best that once you have combined your subs, and have a composite image, to separate the stars from the image, by creating a duplicate layer in P/shop. Then make all the required adjustments to the main image.

Having created a 'star layer', you can reduce the star size, by using Roger's method, devise your own (depending on how familiar you are with P/shop), or with Noel C's 'actions'.

When you are happy with the 'background', the principal object of the image, and the 'star layer', just 'flatten' the image to 'pull' it altogether.

Like all processing functions, there is always a 'trade off', between achieving the desired effect, and degrading parts of the image.

Dave

[jcm]

Thanks for that , Dave. I now have some good "improvement ideas" for my next narrow band imaging attempt.

John

[jcm]

Processed the image differently. Reduced the redness and ran a star size reduction process a couple of times.

Added image to first post so a comparison can be made.

What do people think , better or not ?

John

[CELESCOPE]

well i think it is better myself John , ,stars are a bit smaller and the contrast off the image looks better, thats on my screen anyway , so yes an improvement , if it was mine i would reduce the stars more , but that is totally down to the individual,as to what pleases him or her .

Nice one John.

Rog

[jcm]

well i think it is better myself John , ,stars are a bit smaller and the contrast off the image looks better, thats on my screen anyway , so yes an improvement , if it was mine i would reduce the stars more , but that is totally down to the individual,as to what pleases him or her .

Nice one John.

Rog

Thats what I thought , thanks for the confimation. I will not post anymore of IC410 but I will try further star reduction to see how it turns out.

Thanks again , Rog.

John

[MartinB]

That's a very very good image John. The tadpoles look superb. I wouldn't get too hung up over the stars, it's a very subjective business how tight you go, the key is to keep the stars looking natural and avoid halos of muted colour around them (a problem which can crop up if you over do the reduction). Like Dave I normally reduce the stars on the combined image but, if you get halos in one channel more than the others it can pay to apply a small reduction in this channel before the reduction.

I think you could have a lot of fun processing the individual channels seperately - boosting the SII and OIII a little. Try messing with different colour combinations and see what turns up. Alternatively try messing with the colour balance in PS. Apply things differently with shadows, mid tones and highlights. Just by playing around you will learn a lot about what you can and can't do. Of course at the end of it all you can't see the wood for the trees so it helps to have honest outside opinion like on SGL or the wife (my severest critic - instead of doing that you could be helping me write Christmas cards etc)