Problem targets?

[ollypenrice]

Following from Sara's Crescent Nebula thread, I was mulling over my problem targets. The Crescent is one of mine, too. I just can't get an image I like of it. Another, for me, is the Swan. It's fantastic in the 20 inch, visually. The narrowband is also great. It all goes wrong when I try to do a natural colour rendition. It just has a heavy, stodgy look like some kind of winter soup.

What are your bugbear targets?

Olly

 

[RichLD]

Seemingly regardless of how I approach it, M31 always seems to deliver underwhelming results for me. At the moment I can only gawp in awe and admiration at some of the amazing shots people get of this target.

I've tried everything from layer-masked OSC stacks of varying sub length to try and capture it's large dynamic range, adding 20 minute HA subs as luminance etc but nothing ever seems to make the resulting image look convincing. Perhaps it's a target that works best with an LRGB approach? I dunno....Any advice gratefully received 

I'm going to have another go around November from a dark site I use, fingers crossed!

[ollypenrice]

7 hours ago, RichLD said:

Seemingly regardless of how I approach it, M31 always seems to deliver underwhelming results for me. At the moment I can only gawp in awe and admiration at some of the amazing shots people get of this target.

I've tried everything from layer-masked OSC stacks of varying sub length to try and capture it's large dynamic range, adding 20 minute HA subs as luminance etc but nothing ever seems to make the resulting image look convincing. Perhaps it's a target that works best with an LRGB approach? I dunno....Any advice gratefully received 

I'm going to have another go around November from a dark site I use, fingers crossed!

I always felt my OSC camera was weak on galaxies. I don't know why. My feeling about the dynamic range is that it is best attacked in software rather than via short exposures. Try to bludgeon the contrasts out of the core using pure brutality! In galaxies the Ha usually consists of a smattering of blobs so I wouldn't use of for luminance.

Olly

[RichLD]

That's great Olly,  many thanks for the advice! Come to think of it, the OSC has given satisfying results with nebulae but never really cut it with galaxies...

Oh dear, more filters to buy 

Cheers!

[swag72]

I always feel that M31 is mine..... Not because I've tried it lots of times and failed, but because it was one of the first targets I ever tried....... and I've been too scared to try it since in case it shows little improvement. 

Probably says far more about me than a choice of targets!!

[Uranium235]

Has to be either the Iris or M33 for me, I've never been satisfied with either of them.... both bottomless pits they are. M31... not so bad, I just whack it with a big stick and use plenty of layer masks

 

[johnrt]

Anything in Orion to me, I just cannot get enough decent imaging time on them as they skirt just over the roof of my stupid house for just a couple of hours at the best of times. 

[ollypenrice]

12 hours ago, Uranium235 said:

Has to be either the Iris or M33 for me, I've never been satisfied with either of them.... both bottomless pits they are. M31... not so bad, I just whack it with a big stick and use plenty of layer masks

 

'Bottomless pit' is a good way to describe the Iris. Even the bright part needs vast amounts of exposure because, although the blue comes easily enough, there is that tantalizing whiff of pink which is incredibly shy. As for the dust - truly bottomless.

Maybe M33 is not as bad as you think. The reason it seems difficult, I suspect, is that it has a strange speckled surface which looks like noise but isn't. Because our guests often like to image it I have an almost infinite amount of data and eventually came to accept that the speckle is factual.

12 hours ago, swag72 said:

I always feel that M31 is mine..... Not because I've tried it lots of times and failed, but because it was one of the first targets I ever tried....... and I've been too scared to try it since in case it shows little improvement. 

Probably says far more about me than a choice of targets!!

It's one of those targets with which you will never be satisfied, that's for sure.

Olly

[steppenwolf]

M78 for me - I never seem to quite get enough data to bring out all the colours but I'm going to give it another try this season ........

[RichLD]

14 hours ago, swag72 said:

because it was one of the first targets I ever tried....... and I've been too scared to try it since in case it shows little improvement. 

You definitely have a point there Sara, so true of many things in life!  

[Thalestris24]

Anything and everything that's nebulous....

Louise

[ollypenrice]

 

4 hours ago, steppenwolf said:

M78 for me - I never seem to quite get enough data to bring out all the colours but I'm going to give it another try this season ........

This also describes me. I did a pretty long run on it in the 14 inch while it was here and it was frankly poor. I think I'll follow the 'as long as it takes' maxim on it with the TEC this winter. It's an incredibly beautiful object.

Olly

[ChrisLX200]

ngc1333. It's jinxed - every time I point a scope at it something goes badly wrong, most often the weather.

ChrisH

[ollypenrice]

30 minutes ago, ChrisLX200 said:

ngc1333. It's jinxed - every time I point a scope at it something goes badly wrong, most often the weather.

ChrisH

It's very difficult but certainly worth it. You won't found that colour combination in any other object, I don't think.

Olly

[Alien 13]

The pleiades M45 for me great visually but those diamonds are so so bright and hard to control.

Alan 

[steppenwolf]

Quote

It's an incredibly beautiful object.

.....and that's the draw, of course! It's a relief to know that I'm not alone on this one .........

[PatrickGilliland]

On 11/08/2016 at 15:35, ChrisLX200 said:

ngc1333. It's jinxed - every time I point a scope at it something goes badly wrong, most often the weather.

ChrisH

It's a lovely target Chris - Even found it's way onto the order of service when my father passed last year.  I can thank him for my interest in this hobby and physics though i don't miss him endlessly quoting Carl Sagen  I was working on Lum when he passed so seemed fitting a good amount to!  Barry Wilson kindly provided some nice RGB too which allowed the image to be finished in time.

I think the trick to realise the beauty of this on (for me any way) was lots of fairly aggressive local colour boosts and getting lot's of clean lum data.  Once all the data is there it is really nice to process as well, that said without the data it's a mare.

As for my bugbears anything with stars  daft as it sounds always working to improve them and never happy.

Paddy

[MartinFransson]

The Veil Nebula! Can't get that one looking good. The star field is overpowering when using a DSLR and 300mm lens.