Sharpless 2-199 Soul Nebula

[Anweniel]

Back to one of my favourite objects Sharpless 2-199 'The Soul Nebula'

Intention is to create a composite hydrogen alpha + colour image but I'm having trouble layering my old Ha data with the colour due to the slight angle difference and not knowing quite how to get the two aligned in PS. So, sticking for now with the colour data.

This was my main target this weekend and having trashed 40% of the lights, as I wasn't happy with the guiding, it only left 7 x 10 min exposures stacked. (Also the framing is a way off but since everything else was behaving I didn't bother adjusting!)

If any of you clever people have any tips for me to get the Ha in there too I would really appreciate it though

Here we are then with two versions on the processing:

7 x 600s @ ISO 800

C: Unmodded 1000D

T: WO Megrez 90

M: Celeston CG5-GT

F: SW LPR

[astro mick]

Hi.

Thats a very nice image indeed for so few subs.It does appear a little noisey,but i think more subs would help that.

Regards to adding H-Alpha,i found this to be very helpful.

Hope this helps.

Mick.

Open the RGB colour image, select ‘channels’ tab, click on the red channel and type Ctrl ‘A’ followed by Ctrl ’C’. This will copy the red channel to the Clipboard. Select File - New to form a new document and name it ‘Ha_red’. Type Ctrl ‘V’ to paste the red channel into the new document. Now select the Ha image and type Ctrl. ‘A’ followed by Ctrl. ‘C’. Next select the red channel only image again and type Ctrl ‘V’ to paste the Ha channel on top of the red data.
Select ‘Layers’ tab and use a 50% opacity setting and align the two layers until the stars line up exactly. Now adjust the opacity of the Ha layer until you get the most pleasing mix of the two images. Select Layer - Flatten Layer to flatten the layer. Type Ctrl. ‘A’ followed by Ctrl. ‘C’ then select the original RGB image and type Ctrl ‘V’ to past the blended red data into the original red channel. You will now have a more detailed Ha+R/G/B image.
 

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[Anweniel]

Thanks for the advice Mick, sounds pretty close to the process I tried (shortly after posting this image) to make the combine, think I just have to be a little more precise on the overlap as it has left a small aberration above the stars.

Noise is down to me losing the darks, so I added 4 old ones (completely insufficient I know!) just to get started I will add a proper set soon

Certainly work in progess I love this piece of sky a lot

I will go back and follow your steps exactly as I likely made a hash of combining the data!

Here is the attempt at the HaRRGB:

[andyo]

Nice image

[Anweniel]

Thanks Andyo,

I had another play with a larger set of darks (22x) plus a re-align and combine of the Ha channel into the red.

I think it has improved some of the red regions giving a little more contrast, the noise is still not great though. It's going to be another steep learning curve trying to combine colour and NB exposures in this way!