Pelican to NAN - Giving it the beans (Star71)

[Uranium235]

After a second night of great sleep, my mojo is pretty much back and on fire now - so last night I put the gear out for another couple of hours to top up the data I took last weekend.

The added depth of data has allowed me to really get in there with sharpening and contrast enhancement to bring out the black scratchy stuff, so theres plenty of texture and hardly any noise. For it to be 100% noise free would probably take 6 hours exposure, which is very doable since its getting dark much earlier now. But I am keen to add some OIII and do what Martin did the other day with his IC1396 and try to blag a hubble colour image out of it - so next Moonless night, I'll be on the case. The corners have turned out pretty nicely as well

 

16x900 (Ha)

Star71, Atik 383L+, NEQ6

Thanks for looking

 

Pixel peepers and corner freaks version: HERE

[PhotoGav]

Nice one Rob. Very good to hear that you have been sleeping better. This image has all the hallmarks of a Uranium235 work -  I nearly cut my corneas on it!

[Uranium235]

14 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Nice one Rob. Very good to hear that you have been sleeping better. This image has all the hallmarks of a Uranium235 work -  I nearly cut my corneas on it!

Thanks mate Last night was a pretty good kip too, one more night like that and I'll be well fired-up for my trip to London on Thursday (IAPY award night).

[PhotoGav]

5 minutes ago, Uranium235 said:

Thanks mate Last night was a pretty good kip too, one more night like that and I'll be well fired-up for my trip to London on Thursday (IAPY award night).

Oooo, are you up for a prize? If so, good luck!

[Uranium235]

3 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Oooo, are you up for a prize? If so, good luck!

Probably not (its a tough compo), but its nice to be finally "eating at the top table" so to speak

[ollypenrice]

Good news on the kipper front!

You've pushed the image harder in the same processing direction as the original and, for me, it's gone just a tad too far, developing a slightly 'etched' look where the sharpening seems visible. The stars, though tiny, are also a bit overly sharp to my eye. Personally I'd give the small ones a bit of blur.

For all that, it's an admirable image and gives a refreshing new feel to a very familiar target. The long striations running L-R are excellent.

Olly

[Uranium235]

6 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Good news on the kipper front!

You've pushed the image harder in the same processing direction as the original and, for me, it's gone just a tad too far, developing a slightly 'etched' look where the sharpening seems visible. The stars, though tiny, are also a bit overly sharp to my eye. Personally I'd give the small ones a bit of blur.

For all that, it's an admirable image and gives a refreshing new feel to a very familiar target. The long striations running L-R are excellent.

Olly

Cheers mate, I guess I could back it off a bit and add a little blur to the stars (something I forgot to do on his one).  It will probably look at lot different in colour as using this as lum would probably overpower any RGB layer, so there will be a slightly less mental revision going in tonight  

 

[Allinthehead]

I like this view Rob very nice. Can you guys elaborate on this blurring of smaller stars please? 

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, Allinthehead said:

I like this view Rob very nice. Can you guys elaborate on this blurring of smaller stars please? 

Well in my case it's something I do only rarely because I exclude stars from sharpening. I used to do it sometimes when imaging at coarse pixel scales with the Baby Q and reducer because such scales can give 'blocky' stars. Also, sometimes, star reduction routines can leave the small stars a bit 'spikey' on the eye. I just make a bottom layer, blur it globally till the small stars look right, then select and erase them from the top layer.

Olly

[Uranium235]

2 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

I like this view Rob very nice. Can you guys elaborate on this blurring of smaller stars please? 

My method is to use no Noels actions to select all stars, then apply a very slight gaussian blur with a setting of 0.4 - which is just enough to take the edge off and dim them very slightly. 

If you want to do it selectivity, you can use a layer masks to paint in the sections of the image where you wanto the stars softened.

[Uranium235]

21 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Well in my case it's something I do only rarely because I exclude stars from sharpening. I used to do it sometimes when imaging at coarse pixel scales with the Baby Q and reducer because such scales can give 'blocky' stars. Also, sometimes, star reduction routines can leave the small stars a bit 'spikey' on the eye. I just make a bottom layer, blur it globally till the small stars look right, then select and erase them from the top layer.

Olly

There ya go mate, a slightly less bonkers version. I used a smaller radius on the high pass (2.8), only one pass of Noels contrast blended @ 75%, plus a gaussian blur on the stars (0.4):

 

[ollypenrice]

Now you're talking! That is pure class all the way and the extra data has brought that smoothness which only more data can provide.

Superb.

Olly