Heart nebula update (Ha)

[Uranium235]

The weather has been a bit on/off for the past month, so its been difficult to put any sort of decent run together, and even more difficult to get data of a sufficient quality when shooting RGB (changes in seeing, LP, cloud damage etc...).

As well as trying to get some RGB for the Andomeda project, Ive also topped up the Heart to four hours worth of Ha - which has has the desired effect of reducing the noise a bit more. Still some way to go though, as there is some OIII and SII to capture (if its clear!)

IC1805: Heart Nebula

12x900 + 6x600 (Ha)

80ED (0.85x), NEQ6, Atik 383L+

Thanks for looking

Rob

 

[tony]

i'm liking that rob, a cracker mate.

[swag72]

Very nice processing comes from good data - Another good Heart!!

[fwm891]

So much to see in this image, great processing

[Ewan]

Beautiful so far Rob, i'm sure it will be a cracker when you do collect that data & complete it.

[Uranium235]

Thanks!

Before going to bed last night I had another crack at processing it using fewer subs. Which basically meant going through each one and assessing its quality, I ended up dropping six frames and oddly enough - it seems to have improved it a little. A classic case of less being more!

But I wont post it again though until I have some colour ready, I might go for SII first becuase that will be less affected by the moonlight.

Sara, do you think I got the outer parts right? (Pushed it too far?) When chasing the actual heart shape I found it started to burn the core a little, so I applied a layer mask in a slightly new fashion (for me). Instead of composting two complete frames, all I did was crop the less stretched version right down to the heart of the nebula, then paste that into the longer strech version. From there I processed the layer mask as normal (gaussian blur + curves + eraser).

Its a very different job than it was with the old Atik 314L+ in regard to getting a dynamically balanced image.

[gingergeek]

Cracking picture, I may put my Atik460 onto my ED80 which I haven't used since I got a ZS71. I may even sell one of them at some point but not sure which one. 

[Uranium235]

If I were you id keep both. Being as you have a 460 with its small pixels you can shoot NB with the reduced zs71 and still maintain decent resolution and good speed. The 80ED would be used for RGB projects as its colour correction is better.

I im in a similar situation at the moment, do i sell my remaining and proven optics and splash out over a grand on a 80mm triplet, or just keep what i have and buy a cheaper scope dedicated for NB work, where good colour correction isnt important.

[gingergeek]

Yes I'm in that exact situation as well except I've decided to get a FSQ85 at some point so I figured I would have to sell a scope to offset the cost of the Tak.