Lagoon Nebula Proccessing

[Herzy]

Last night I went to an observatory to take some pictures of the lagoon nebula with some of my fellow astronomers. The skies were so good that I got disoriented and lost most of my imaging time. All in all I got maybe 25 minutes of the Lagoon Nebula. I didn't think to take any calibration frames so there is some bad vignetting and some hot pixels that look pretty ugly. If you have the time would you spend some time to see what you can get out of this image stack? That would mean a lot, thanks in advance! PS: If you do decide to give it a try will you post some of the details as to how you processed it? 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wihn1jpovezpp2n/Stack.tiff?dl=0

Hayden

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Hayden,

I'll see what I can do for you :-) I do envy you being able to image such lovely objects, I have only observed that region a few times when at a dark site in Cornwall, UK when on holiday.

Best Regards,
Steve

[SteveNickolls]

Hiya again,

When I attempted to open the file in StarTools it won't be opened. Can you provide it in FITs format?

Thanks,
Steve

[Herzy]

28 minutes ago, SteveNickolls said:

Hiya again,

When I attempted to open the file in StarTools it won't be opened. Can you provide it in FITs format?

Thanks,
Steve

Oh sorry I forgot about that problem. You have to convert it into a different file format for Startools. I don't know how to convert to FIT so I will convert it to PNG and upload it, is that alright?

And yes, it's nice being able to image the beautiful ones. My next target is the Eagle Nebula!  

I'll update you when it's finished uploading to dropbox.

[Herzy]

 

39 minutes ago, SteveNickolls said:

Hiya again,

When I attempted to open the file in StarTools it won't be opened. Can you provide it in FITs format?

Thanks,
Steve

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9g1e8gam9vqivg/Stack.png?dl=0

Here is the link

[MattJenko]

Here is my effort using PixInsight

DynamicCrop to remove the stacking band along the top
DBE to remove gradients
BackgroundNeutraliztion to drop the background intensity
ColourCalibration
Histogram Stretch
Curves for fine stretch and colour saturation
TGVDenoise to remove chroma noise and noise artefacts
Histogram Stretch to set black point
HDRMultiscaleTransform to tease detail in bright core
LocalHistogramEqualization to inject a bit of depth
Final Curves Tweak.
 

[SteveNickolls]

Hiya,

I've processed using StarTools. The sequence followed was-

1.Bin 35%
2.Crop
3.WIPE using Vignetting option and 5 px Dark Anomoly
4.DEVELOP Digital Development 86% Gamma 1.00
5. CONTRAST Expose Dark Areas and Dark Anomoly Filter 3 px
6. HDR Optimize option
7. SHARPEN 214%
8. LIFE Less=More
9.TRACKING

The data wasn't enough for StarTools to easily process using the COLOR module so after attempting did not try.

Cheers,
Steve

 

 

 

 

 

[Herzy]

19 minutes ago, SteveNickolls said:

Hiya,

I've processed using StarTools. The sequence followed was-

1.Bin 35%
2.Crop
3.WIPE using Vignetting option and 5 px Dark Anomoly
4.DEVELOP Digital Development 86% Gamma 1.00
5. CONTRAST Expose Dark Areas and Dark Anomoly Filter 3 px
6. HDR Optimize option
7. SHARPEN 214%
8. LIFE Less=More
9.TRACKING

The data wasn't enough for StarTools to easily process using the COLOR module so after attempting did not try.

Cheers,
Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, MattJenko said:

Here is my effort using PixInsight

DynamicCrop to remove the stacking band along the top
DBE to remove gradients
BackgroundNeutraliztion to drop the background intensity
ColourCalibration
Histogram Stretch
Curves for fine stretch and colour saturation
TGVDenoise to remove chroma noise and noise artefacts
Histogram Stretch to set black point
HDRMultiscaleTransform to tease detail in bright core
LocalHistogramEqualization to inject a bit of depth
Final Curves Tweak.
 

You both managed to get something similar to what I got. I could get a whole bunch of the data to show up but the background was too bright. I tried masking the nebula and decreasing the background brightness but it just looked strange. 

[SteveNickolls]

Try imaging again when you can Herzy, more photons will do wonders in the processing steps.

Good luck.

Steve

[Herzy]

11 hours ago, SteveNickolls said:

Try imaging again when you can Herzy, more photons will do wonders in the processing steps.

Good luck.

Steve

Here is my final result. Im happy with how much data I got out but as I said earlier the background is still really red.

[des anderson]

wow!!!!!,there good.Des

[wxsatuser]

My go

[toxic]

here is a quickie 

just levels in photoshop and dbe in pixinsight.

 

[Rush]

Hi Hayden,

some processing on your Lgn.N. More photon more fun . Collimation and C.correction not accurate i guess. elongated stars around the corner.

Cropping is always a solution. Colours can be adjusted according to the taste, Thanx 4 the nice image. 

C.S

Rush

[Herzy]

On July 1, 2016 at 11:00, Rush said:

Hi Hayden,

some processing on your Lgn.N. More photon more fun . Collimation and C.correction not accurate i guess. elongated stars around the corner.

Cropping is always a solution. Colours can be adjusted according to the taste, Thanx 4 the nice image. 

C.S

Rush

Wow! that one really stands out! Great job!!

[Rush]

 thanx Man.

[Astrosurf]

On 01/07/2016 at 17:00, Rush said:

Hi Hayden,

some processing on your Lgn.N. More photon more fun . Collimation and C.correction not accurate i guess. elongated stars around the corner.

Cropping is always a solution. Colours can be adjusted according to the taste, Thanx 4 the nice image. 

C.S

Rush

Lovely. What were your processing steps for this? 

Alexxx

[Herzy]

On July 11, 2016 at 14:37, Rush said:

 thanx Man.

 

On July 20, 2016 at 03:45, Astrosurf said:

Lovely. What were your processing steps for this? 

Alexxx

+1 That image is really good and he seemed to just nonchalantly post it haha. That's better than what I could get with several hours of processing. If you can remember, please post some details as to what steps you did. Thanks!

Hayden

[Rush]

Hi Alex & Hayden,

sorry 4 the late reply, went to meet Olly and will be back home in 10 days .

Will check up and try to detail the workflow.

best regards from S. France

CS

Rush

[Astrosurf]

Ooohhh, you lucky thing! Say hi to Olly for me. One day I may even make it over there.

[Herzy]

Where is Olly at?

14 hours ago, Astrosurf said:

Ooohhh, you lucky thing! Say hi to Olly for me. One day I may even make it over there.

 

[Astrosurf]

10 hours ago, Herzy said:

Where is Olly at?

 

This is on his sig block:

Run Les Granges Astronomy Holidays, teach/study imaging, SE France. 20 inch Dob.  TEC140 apo on Avalon Linear FR. 2xTakahashi FSQ106 tandem on Mesu mount 200.  TeleVue Pronto, ZS66, 6 inch achro. Other mounts, Takahashi EM200, 2 x EQ6. TeleVue Gibraltar and TelePod. CCD; 2xAtik11000 full frame, SXVH36, Atik 320E, Lodestar, DMK21. Leica bins. Some kit is co-owned owned with Tom O'Donoghue and Yves Van den Broek. Host 4 scope robotic shed. www.sunstarfrance.com

[ollypenrice]

Processing is generally more than half of the story but only when you have good data to start with. I'd say that, in Ha, Capture is 80% of the story. In colour - ah - maybe only 30%! Colour can be a devil but it's amazing what can be extracted from compromised data. Part of the fun!!!

Olly

[Herzy]

2 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Processing is generally more than half of the story but only when you have good data to start with. I'd say that, in Ha, Capture is 80% of the story. In colour - ah - maybe only 30%! Colour can be a devil but it's amazing what can be extracted from compromised data. Part of the fun!!!

Olly

I thought my processing wasn't too bad (it's gotten better since I posted that nasty photo above), but when I saw his I realized mine was pretty awful lol . I should've captured at least an hour of data... I mean I was there for three hours but I was just talking to people the whole time. I'm heading over to the observatory again at the end of August do you have any ideas as to what I could go for? I've already have some good attempts at the Eagle and Omega nebula from my house so those are probably not worth spending the limited time imaging. 

Hayden

[ollypenrice]

5 minutes ago, Herzy said:

I thought my processing wasn't too bad (it's gotten better since I posted that nasty photo above), but when I saw his I realized mine was pretty awful lol . I should've captured at least an hour of data... I mean I was there for three hours but I was just talking to people the whole time. I'm heading over to the observatory again at the end of August do you have any ideas as to what I could go for? I've already have some good attempts at the Eagle and Omega nebula from my house so those are probably not worth spending the limited time imaging. 

Hayden

Whatever you go for you must understand that it is all about time. The very simplest images I post will have 6 hours. These will be bright targets like clusters which need no hard stretching.

My friend Yves and I spent about 22 hours on the Eagle. It just does take time. There is no way out of this at present. Click on the image and look for Full Size, bottom left. Honestly, time, time, time. C'est la vie!

 

Olly