M16 Eagle OSC plus Mono - first combo

[Jessun]

Hello,

Not terribly easy this at first I must say! I have combined just over 8 hours SW120 OSC data with 4 hours of Ha through the mono on the SW80. Registar came in handy to align the two panes - the OSC coveres a bit more, but I still find the program quite confusing.

Hours of faffing about in Photoshop trying to get my head around how to combine the two finally produced this, and I welcome any pointers on where I'm heading.

I included the Ha layer too.

Thanks for looking!

/Jesper

[ScottS]

Fantastic pics. This is the Messier object I want to see for myself more than any other.

[ollypenrice]

Heh heh, calling Registar 'handy' is like calling a parachute 'handy' if you happen to have jumped out of an aeroplane!!!

This is really great stuff. I know your colour was shot at the most difficult of difficult sites but the fusion is superb. No pink-out, no ghastly blue stellar haloes from the addition of Ha. Tiny stars just like narrowband. (Might have to ask you how you did this...)

You could look for more star colour and a bit more local contrast but Noel Carboni could help you in that respect. (He's very nice. He always helps me!)

Super stuff, subtle and stunningly well resolved.

Olly

[andyo]

that's a superb capture great depth to it

[ollypenrice]

Fantastic pics. This is the Messier object I want to see for myself more than any other.

I have a 20 inch at a very dark site at Lat 44 and you see very very little of this nebulosity. The claw feature is, for my eyes, miles out of reach. Just to the south the Swan is dead easy.

Olly

[ScottS]

Nevertheless, still my favourite object.

[Jessun]

Thanks guys.

Well, Olly, that parachute would have nine straps and fifteen handles to open it, fourteen of which do not actually work...

This is a gentle edit, admittedly. Might just try some of those actions.

Since I don't know how to do this, I could invent my own way, so the colour data is really just for sky and stars, and I applied a double gradex to the whole thing. This pulls the backgound up to high 30s, so a mid point adjuter got that down, taking the stars with them. Then I increased star colour, followed by three 'make stars smaller'. I've been playing with the order of this, but I think it's good to pull in some fringe colour before shrinking them. Mainly guess work. I kept eyballing the layers on/off to check that the stars didn't swell out too much over the Ha.

Many images of the Eagle and similar nebulae have a blue glow to the bright cores, something not seen here since I didn't push the RGB data very much. I guess better quality is needed for this layer to pull it off effectively.

I'll keep experimenting!

/Jesper

[Jessun]

Ok, lets ramp up the stars a notch and try the 'increase local contrast'.

I think it added to the image.

Good call!

/Jesper

[StuartJPP]

Great work there!