Another go at Balrog processing

[gorann]

This is data from the end of November that I got inspired to reprocess from start after I saw the recent NBC1333 thread by simmo39. He had 9 h of data and I think it looked very promising and quite different from my first attempt to process my 4.65 h of data. This time it looks much better and for the first time I can see the balrog in the image. I know it is a faint and difficult target and I should really get more data and I was aiming at 13 h but had some mishaps with guiding and forgot to put in a new battery in the camera before I went to bed.

In any case, here it is at its present stage and any comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Equipment: ES 127 ED apo (at f/7.5) with ES flattner on EQ8 and Canon 60Da. 29 x 6 min and 7 x 15 min at ISO1600. Photoshop CS5.

Happy New Year and Cheers!

from Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef = I will pop the corks much earlier than most of you

 

 

Edited December 31, 2016 by gorann

[Stu1976j]

What a fabulous image  

[gorann]

Thanks Stu!

[gorann]

While slowly recovering from last nights celebration I did some more processing and managed to more clearly bring out the dark stuff in this dark nebula. I actually did it mostly by accident when I was trying out some of Noel's actions in PS that I had not tried before - one called Hard Color Gradient Removal. Not sure if it is better than the last version but it is quite different and here it is:

Comments and suggestions most welcome of course!

 

Edited January 5, 2017 by gorann