I've created the Orion nebula monster

[carl20171]

When you get over the initial laughing like I did, does anyone have a clue where I went wrong. 

Combined 6 photos of each from a monochrome camera

Ha

OIII

SII

opened the 3 separate images in Maxum.

Went to combine color and chose the Ha red, o3 green, SII blue and hit combine.

It doesnt look quite so bad in a fits format but pretty close to the same. The colors are ,,,  well you can see.

Do I need to move over to photoshop for adjusting curves? Or is there more to do in maxum?

Thanks in advance

[Earl]

the are not aligned, id look into that first.

[Earl]

I have aligned the r g b , its still wrong, but as part of calibration, its a step that needs to be done before they are combined.

[Earl]

When you combine Ha, SII and OIII, hubble palette is: SHO, SII to Red, Ha to Green, OIII to Blue

[carl20171]

It's surely a humbling experience learning AP.  I have been doing underwater photography for many years. At first I thought everything in the photograph was supposed to be green. Years later I could look back and have a good laugh. I really like the steep learning curve here though. This hobby could take years to master, or longer. I saw so many great photos and thought that would be cool to do myself. I had no idea of the dedication and time you all spend the make this art. You have my respect. I guess to refocus on this I think the hardest thing is getting data on exactly what and how to proceed. It seems I am out of alignment and the colors are not combining correctly. Should I be reading something somewhere? A book or maybe a help file. Where do you guys and gals get your info from. I feel bad asking , how do I align, how do I color stack etc. I know Earl, Olly, A guy with a ship in the background of his photo and a Lady with an observatory and many others have been so very helpful. All us newbies really do appreciate it. 

[Earl]

With Atrophotography you have to have a workflow for all the steps:

A ) Calbration Files

You need to have your Bias frames these are the minimum exposure the camera does so as to creat an electronic fingerprint of the chip. (I gather 99 of these) I do these at the setpoint of the cooling i use/

Darks, a set of images of the same expsure duration you will be using for your lights but taken with no light goign to the sensor (shuuter shut and cap on the nise) These create an average thermal image of the noise the camera generates at the chosen cooling setting and duration. ( I again gather 99)

B ) Image acquisition.

Target centered, Telescope guiding or tracking acuratly (guiding the easier option on the whole)

take the subs (subframes ie. 10 x 300 second blue filter ) you will be using and ideally take the Flat frames used to calibrate the data later.

C ) Data Calibration

do the appropiate with the software your using, they all do essentially the same thing, just do it their own way. 3 steps, calibrate the subs with the calibration files, align the subs, stack the subs

D ) Image processing

Once you have your calibrated images you then process them according to the software you use.

At first it sounds all so confusing, but once you get your head around the workflow and what your doing and why it does all drop into place.

This is very simple basis to work from.