Where's the elephant's trunk?

[Galaxyfaraway]

I tried my luck with a nebula the other night having sorted out my guiding and getting a LP filter finally.

I did manage about 7 exposures of 10 minutes each (ISO800), before I felt sleepy, and stacked the lot in DSS, cropped a bit and turned some knobs in Lightroom but I still can't see any hint of the nebula in the image, despite the longer exposures (and despite a recent visit to Specsavers).

Should I focus on better post-processing (I think a bit of red is due to turning up vibrance/saturation a bit: I am not sure that's really there) or is it just impossible to get a beautiful colour from a nebula without a modded DSLR or CCD? (I used my full-frame Nikon d750, unmodded with IDAS LP filter D1, telescope: WO GT81 with flattener/reducer).

I am attaching a link to the original TIFF (stacked), in case someone wants to try to see what else is there:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dr26am2zh75kag0/Elephant%20Trunk%2016%20bit.tif?dl=0

Any pointers? There do seem to be some stars in the picture and they don't resemble shooting stars which is a good start I suppose.

But I am desperate to improve and get those my trunks in a row!

Yours desperately, gfa

[StargeezerTim]

Half way across, a third of the way up from the bottom, it's there!  It's a tricky one to process. Try some repeated gentle curves on the edge of the trunk and it will slowly reveal itself. You could do a big crop to make it a bit more prominent. Its quite a small feature. Tim. 

[almcl]

What Stargeezer Tim said, except I'd say more nearly centre.

I've over stretched your jpeg a bit (hope that's OK?) to see what's there, and cropped it as well because there may be some gradients, but I think the raw data has probably got much more detail that could be brought out.

[D4N]

Well you definitely captured it, the IR filter on your camera will be making this a lot more difficult than it should be though.

/Dan

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[Galaxyfaraway]

Oh wow, almcl, this is one tiny little trunkchen I see there, but a trunk nevertheless! I will have to get out my larger tube next time (C8) if I am to impress the ladies.

How did you do the colour thing? I'm actually more curious about that. Turning up saturation even more in Lightroom is bringing up some uglies. I presume this is with photoshop. I have followed Doug German's tutorials: 

and learned so far how to make yourself less attractive to the opposite sex (1:22). (The tutorials are quite good, but don't deal with the colour. Mainly curves & levels. I presume I need to do something with the colour channels?)

Any links to any other tutorials?

Next time, if I manage to last more than 10 minutes with my PHD guiding, would it bring out more colour? All the images do tend to come out pretty grey..

[almcl]

Oh dear! Sorry but I am afraid I don't use Adobe products (or at least not until 2 days ago when a copy of Photoshop CC arrived on my machine at work).

I stretched your image in Star Tools (you can download the full version of that here for free: http://www.startools.org/downloads- it won't let you save until you purchase a licence ~£30 but you can screen grab the results until then.)

All told it took about three minutes and I didn't use all the available modules. I am pretty sure you can achieve the same results in other software although that probably requires more skill than I possess. I think starting with adjusting contrast might be the first step but more knowledgeable members here can surely give better advice.

[ollypenrice]

Here you go. The portrait format image is yours and crossing it, in landscape, is an Ha rendition in which the Trunk is easy to spot. Combined in Registar.

Olly

[Galaxyfaraway]

I was going to go 'all in' and go for Pixinsight (after the proceeds for my kidney come through on ebay). But perhaps will give startools a try!

Thanks for the tip! gfa

[Galaxyfaraway]

How. Did. You. Do. That.

I guess the 'Ha' image must have been taken with a CCD camera plus filter?

I am going to throw my Nikon against the wall in a minute...(I do love it for normal photography: please don't break!)

[ollypenrice]

How. Did. You. Do. That.

I guess the 'Ha' image must have been taken with a CCD camera plus filter?

I am going to throw my Nikon against the wall in a minute...(I do love it for normal photography: please don't break!)

It's just an Ha image taken, as you say, with a CCD camera and Astrodon 3 Nan Ha filter. Registar had no difficulty in recognizing the starfield in your image.

There is no doubt, on emission nebulae, that blending an an Ha layer into a colour image brings out more structure and signal in less time than any other method. A simple red filter doesn't find the same level of local contrast. The trouble is that the Ha wavelength lies right on the edge of the spectrum passed by normal DSLRs so much of it is blocked.

Olly

[D4N]

It's almost like camera manufacturers do it on purpose to get us to shell out on expensive CCD cameras! I mean it wouldn't hurt to design DSLR's that let through the Ha emissions, it probably would hurt CCD sales though, especially un-cooled OSC cameras.

I did notice that the glass I took out of my camera was tinted blue, I assume this means that it is blocking more red than blue even in the visible spectrum.

/Dan

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[StargeezerTim]

I had a little play with your tiff! There is not a lot of colour there. I find that processing the 32 bit autosave works best. I used PS. Anyway, the trunk is there.

I'm sure someone more skilled in processing would do a nicer job...

[ollypenrice]

It's almost like camera manufacturers do it on purpose to get us to shell out on expensive CCD cameras! I mean it wouldn't hurt to design DSLR's that let through the Ha emissions, it probably would hurt CCD sales though, especially un-cooled OSC cameras.

I did notice that the glass I took out of my camera was tinted blue, I assume this means that it is blocking more red than blue even in the visible spectrum.

/Dan

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The DSLR and CCD manufacturers are not the same people and the DSLR people (Nikon and Canon) do offer astro friendly alternatives from time to time.

Olly

[D4N]

The chip manufacturers are the same though I think.

The Astro friendly DSLR's are even less wallet friendly than CCD's [emoji37]

I know it is all economies of scale, the chips with a bayer matrix over the top are built in huge quantities whereas monochrome chips are far more specialised and will only be produced in smaller batches.

I think the amount of good yet not too expensive planetary cameras has been down to those chips being the same as what goes into CCTV cameras that also benefit from being able to work in low light applications.

That doesn't stop me looking for the conspiracy though [emoji102]

/Dan

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[ollypenrice]

In any event it would be great to see some of these new CMOS chips finding their way into monochrome astro cameras.

Olly

[Galaxyfaraway]

I did a bit more tweaking & tugging on the trunk and came up with this.

Still finding my way with Star Tools: found it hit & miss so far. It seems a very 'potent' software but I can't seem to rein back this potency after pressing autoDev button...a bit all over the place.

I think I will have to stop faking it, suck it up and get a proper mono CCD with filters. Olly's copulation attempt with my picture certainly gave me some thought for food.

Lots of questions to follow...naturally.

[almcl]

Still finding my way with Star Tools: found it hit & miss so far. It seems a very 'potent' software but I can't seem to rein back this potency after pressing autoDev button..

There's a learning curve on StarTools! One thing I found helped to start with was to avoid autodev (it emphasises all the issues - my images have lots, usually) and just use the home-in function on dev, followed by crop and then wipe.

[MartinFransson]

The Astro friendly DSLR's are even less wallet friendly than CCD's [emoji37]

/Dan

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But it's not THAT bad I bought a Canon 1100D for about 160 Euros (demo, hardly used, full warranty) and you can gave it modded for maybe 100 Euros. That's not nearly as expensive as a CCD. I've taken photos of for example the same area you posted here, with OK results I think.

Here's an example (small format, for Instagram)

That was a few hours of 5-minute subs. With your 10-minute subs it could have been even better.

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[D4N]

I meant the mono DSLRs, they are incredibly expensive. Full spectrum modded cameras aren't so bad of course but then they aren't so great for narrowband either.

/Dan

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