My Markarian chain

[Pompey Monkey]

Well, this is my first ever "proper" LRGB effort using my Star 71, from a rather light polluted garden in Portchester, Hants. Getting on for 10 hrs in total exposure time. Processed in PI (thanks Kayron) and PS (thanks Olly), but I still haven't worked out how to tease the colours out properly (Olly, I can't find your method on here - I must be searching with the wrong terms..)

51*180s luminance, 49*180s red, 45*180s green, 49*180s blue

I'm actually very happy how it's come out, despite the various technical challenges along the way! 

 

PS - anyone on here able/qualified to collimate a 5 element astrograph for beer tokens? lol.

[Davey-T]

Very nice Paul, waiting for a clear night to have a go at this target with the Star71, not any big nebula in range for me at this time of year.

Dave

[gorann]

Great image! You got them all in. But as you say something happened to you colour - these are quite colourful galaxies. Have you tried to stretch your stacked colour images before you put them together for the LRGB. I assume you have seen Olly's recently posted Markarian wide field so you will know what coulors to aim for.

[Pompey Monkey]

35 minutes ago, gorann said:

Great image! You got them all in. But as you say something happened to you colour - these are quite colourful galaxies. Have you tried to stretch your stacked colour images before you put them together for the LRGB. I assume you have seen Olly's recently posted Markarian wide field so you will know what coulors to aim for.

Hi gorann. I combined the rgb in PI before stretching in Photoshop and blending the stretched luminance in later. I thought that was a good way to go. Maybe I'll try it stretched first and second what results ?

[matt-c]

Great photo!! 

[Stu]

Lovely image! I like it with the colours muted as it more closely matches the visual views I was getting at SGLX1, although you've gone a heck of a lot deeper than I could see obviously!

[laudropb]

Very nice capture.

[Pompey Monkey]

5 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Very nice Paul, waiting for a clear night to have a go at this target with the Star71, not any big nebula in range for me at this time of year.

Dave

Hi Dave,

I guess that living inside the M25 you have as much, if not more, LP than I do. I typically visually go to mag 4.0 on a good night, 4.5 on an exceptional night, but usually 3.5 is about my limit

It is possible to do the LRBG stuff from these kind of locations, but from what I am learning:

Don't expect to go very deep - this is dark sky territory;

Expect a long total integration time for half decent images - it's all about SNR! Perhaps we could do a collaborative image with the Star 71's and 8300 chips?

 

Paul

[ollypenrice]

Great on the L.

I stretch RGB and L separately but don't push the L too far or it will bleach out the colour.

There are various ways to intensify RGB colour but don't use Saturation other than as a last resort. There are two well known tricks. In Lab Colour Space you can push the contrast in a and b channels. You can also create two copy layers, set the top one to Blend Mode Soft Light, flatten onto the second, then set that to Blend Mode Colour and flatten.

When colour is thin the L can be blended iteratively, with a saturation boost at each iteration.

I think that dong RGB in light pollution is heroic and long may it continue, though I'm not very much help in regard to how to do it!

Olly

[Davey-T]

17 hours ago, Pompey Monkey said:

Hi Dave,

I guess that living inside the M25 you have as much, if not more, LP than I do. I typically visually go to mag 4.0 on a good night, 4.5 on an exceptional night, but usually 3.5 is about my limit

It is possible to do the LRBG stuff from these kind of locations, but from what I am learning:

Don't expect to go very deep - this is dark sky territory;

Expect a long total integration time for half decent images - it's all about SNR! Perhaps we could do a collaborative image with the Star 71's and 8300 chips?

 

Paul

Hi Paul, I have a "darker" sky to the east /south and have managed a few LRGB efforts but generally confine them to capturing star layers for NB images.

My main problem is lack of decent imaging nights, I have countless unfinished images lurking on my laptop, this winter has been abysmal, I had a plan for the Witch Head Nebula using  Star71 and QSI683 and managed just one session of noisy rubbish before it disappeared into the S London orange glow.

A collaboration sounds good and I will be having a shot at Makarians galaxies when weather / Moon permits, at this time of year I usually concentrate on small NGC galaxies and planetary nebula using the 10" SCT.

Dave

[kendg]

Thanks for the image. Looks great and just adds to the growing list of targets.

[MartinB]

Lovely clean image Paul.  

 

[Pompey Monkey]

I had a stab at Olly's suggestions for increasing the colour with limited success. I guess that my data are just to weak!

It's still an improvement though. Cheers Olly!

Oh yes btw, "Heroic" as in Custer... lol