25 hour NB mosaic of Pelican/North American nebula

[Martin-Devon]

Taken over 6 weeks during May and June, this is a 4 panel mosaic consisting of 152 x 10 min subs (just over 25 hours) across H-alpha, OIII and SII filters. Processed in Hubble palette format with SHO = RGB. 

Played around endlessly with the colour options on this one! It's possible to dial-in a wide range of colour options, either strong or weak, across the yellows, oranges, reds and blues. Although I looked at various endpoints I kept coming back to the orange/blue combination. 

Thanks for looking,

Martin

[swag72]

Strange this Martin, I was only thinking yesterday that I'd not seen any images from you for a while and I wondered how you were.

WOW!! What a image to post. That is so sharp it's mad and I love the colours. What a lovely image, really liking that

Do you use PI or PS for processing?

[tingting44]

totally stunning!! where did you get 25 hours cloud free in 2 months, let alone this year! lol and what a fab job you have done

[Mr Spock]

Incredible looking image!

I do notice some of your images aren't quite aligned though

[iksose7]

Well done on that Martin, details everywhere, you have shown the area off nicely!

[Sandancer10]

FAB-U-LOUS 

Somewhere in the dim and distance future I would love to be able to post something like this. Well done.

[Stevp]

Wow!!

[pietervdv]

Nice overview of thge area Martin.

Possibly something went wrong assembling the mosaic? The area above the "eye" in the Pelican does not look correct to me? It seems

like the same patch is cloned a couple of times? There is a bright star just above the "eye" of the Pelican which does not show on your image, check some reference images of ic5070.

I imaged the area myself this week, otherwise I would never have noticed, but great shot in any case!

Regards,

Pieter

[Barry-Wilson]

Impressive dedication over the last couple of months Martin.  Lovely wide field image and the processing enhancing the depth of field.  Rich tonal HST palette too.

Like Sara, I'm interested to know if you've used PI with HDR wavelets, LHE contrast boosting and even Dark Structure enhancements?

In my imagination it almost seems to me that the Pelican is just poised to land and touchdown on the Mexico Wall  .

Top drawer!

Barry

[RobH]

Wow!! What a stunning image. I love your choice of colour, and it's so sharp you could cut yourself :-)

[Martin-Devon]

Thanks very much for all your comments.

I've just checked what Pieter was referring to and have found on closer inspection that he is correct - there is a tiny slither around the Pelican's eye where the mosaic for the top 2 panels has not quite joined correctly, so this is indeed an error on my part. I would have missed this, so I'm very grateful to Pieter for bringing this to my attention. I suspect this is also what Michael (Mr Spock) may have been referring to as well. It's annoying, but can easily be corrected so I'll diligently go away, and will post a corrected version sometime over the next few days. I'm just chewing over whether I have to run through the entire processing all over again; I hope not since this took me hours to put together! It's also a "lesson learnt" for me to be more careful in checking that these mosaics are totally correct in their build and not to rely on the supposed accuracy of software.

Sara & Barry also asked whether I used PI or PS - all of the processing here was done in PS, there was no use at all of HDR wavelets or the like. I did use Local Contrast Enhancement in Noel's actions though, and this is a favoured process tool that I and others like to use.

[Mr Spock]

Yes, there is the area top middle not aligned. Also, the bottom right pane has at least three images not aligned. The left side looks ok

It's still a great image - hope I haven't spoiled your day!

[Martin-Devon]

Michael, I need to check a few things with you since 36 subs were used for the bottom-right panel alone. I need to understand the points you raise - so just PM'ing you now with a message.

Thanks, Martin

[Spoon]

That's absolutely amazing!!! Great work,

Cam

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[x6gas]

Fabulous image Martin and can only get better when you iron out the slight issues with the mosaic.

Beautifully processed as ever and the hard won data is really being shown off in your rendition.  This must have been a real labour of love so congratulations on a fabulous result.

[Mark72]

Beautiful work Martin, colors are particular impressive, this combination of blue and orange.

Great image!

Mark

[PNJ]

brill what more can you say

paul j

[peter shah]

so much detail....nice job

[davew]

The effect of dust and muck over laying the Nebula is particularly strong. I've tried and failed to get that thin translucent look to the dust.

It shows quite well upper left but is beautiful lower right.

I hope you've managed to sort the software,

Dave.

[AstroGZ]

Absolutely amazing! The amount of detail is astonishing.  

[Quatermass]

Super cool image

[RichM63]

I love the image, it is fabulous!

You guys have amazing skills.

But for the life of me I can't see a Pelican.

I see a young face with tousled hair, just above bottom centre, will someone please help me out.

Best,

Rich

[Martin-Devon]

Rich, thanks for your comment! This is actually one of the easier ones to spot - believe me some others are much more obscure than this. The pelican is the large object in the top of the image, in the middle. In fact bang in the middle, then about 1/4 the way down you'll see the dark eye, then you can start to see what looks like it's head, and a long beak going down quite a way. To the right looks like what could be a big wing coming out. The framing has rotated the pelican so the beak is pointing almost directly vertically down. Let me know if you still cannot spot it and I'll send you a PM to show you on a cut/paste version. All good fun....

Martin

[RichM63]

Thanks Martin with your description I put a full sized version on a big monitor. Yes I can see what you describe, the early guys must have had a surreal sense.

This is the face that I see at first glance.

[ollypenrice]

Ecxellent.

The thing I'd work on would be the stars which show some dark ringing and, in some areas, slight elongation. I suspect that they might have benefitted from being excluded from some of the sharpening processes -though I'm guessing. In my rare forays into pure narrowband I sometimes blurred the stars slightly since they can look a bit blocky 'as is.'

As for the Pelican, what has happened here is that the colour mapping, which is very informative, has broken up the Pelican shape. Seen in one filter (certainly in Ha) it is one of the best named objects in the sky, I reckon, and on a par with the Horsehead.

Olly