NGC7380 - Narrowband Wizard

[PhotoGav]

Here is my rendition of NGC 7380, The Wizard Nebula in Cepheus:

Details are:

Ha 14 x 1200s

OIII 11 x 1200s

SII 10 x 1200s

RGB 3 x 300s each - added as star colour layer

Celestron EdgeHD 8" with 0.7x Reducer, QSI 683.

This has tested me to the limits of my processing abilities. I'm not sure if I have succeeded. The image is pretty noisy, which is not something I was expecting from the mono CCD, but the OIII and SII data needed one heck of a stretch to get it to do anything to the image!

Anyway, please do let me know what you reckon and if you have any thoughts / advice / criticisms / comments, please don't hesitate!

Thanks and clear skies.

[Martin-Devon]

That's a stunner Gav! Not sure if the RGB star colour has added much, but it's never easy to blend RGB into narrowband anyhow. The colours in the Wizard itself are just sublime though, and there's lots of delicate fluffy nebulosity in there - really nice.

Martin

[Barry-Wilson]

I like that very much Gav.

As Martin said, great detail and delicate nebulosity.

Barry

[theo]

That's a lovely image Gav especially for 8" of aperture!!

If i'm honest I do agree there is a bit of excess noise which does seem strange as the QSI is so good for producing low noise subs. It's probably the amount of stretch to the OIII & SII data as you are suggesting (what are your skies like.. is there much light pollution?). Also maybe the stars at the edge of the field could be slightly better in shape and there appears some colour misalignment on the stars here and there.

I  hope you don't mind my thoughts, I certainly don't want to take anything away from what is otherwise a great image.

Pete 

[theo]

Sorry, I should have added that my thought on the light pollution are that some noise may have crept in through the RGB subs.

[swag72]

A couple of thoughts - its a great image firstly.

I tried some RGB stars a while back on an image. People really thought it would make it........ Dropped like a lead balloon, RGB stars with NB don't seem to sit comfortably with many human palettes. Save yourself the time and bother!

[jimao22]

Often when you make a NB composition, the stars tend to became pink.

You could resolve this very simple, in Photoshop. Open the picture (.tiff file usually), go to Filter tab, Reduce Noise -> Strenght = 10, Preserve details = 100% (or Strenght = 0, Preserve details = - ), Reduce color noise = 100%, Sharpen details = 0%.  This will make the program to "think" the stars are actually noise. But we will allow to PS to act only to the noise color. This will turn the pink color of the stars into white. 

[PhotoGav]

Thank you for your comments all. Some food for thought there.

I'm sure the noise is not from the RGB data - that was clean and the noise was there before putting that layer in. I'm pretty certain the noise is from the stretching - I'll post up the three stretched layers when back on the computer.

My skies are pretty good re. LP. It might just be that I need tons more data with the two faint filters?

I will also post a no RGB version. I'll have a play with that technique @jimao22 and see how it looks.

Thanks.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk