Wizard Nebula

[alan4908]

To further improve my narrowband processing skills, I thought I could do with some more practice, so here's my attempt at the Wizard nebula. The image represents 13.5 hours integration time and was taken with my Esprit 150. 

Comments and criticism appreciated !

Alan

 

LIGHTS: 16 Ha, 11 OIII x 1800s. DARKS: 30, FLATS:40, BIAS:100 all at -20C. 

[simmo39]

Wow, v nice!

[newbie alert]

Brilliant.. captured some detail there 

[Rodd]

Great image.  In the way of CC,I think focus may be a wee bit soft.  Hard to tell though.  Could be processing (software is often so uncooperative!).

Rodd

[jazza]

I really like this one!

[alan4908]

15 hours ago, simmo39 said:

Wow, v nice!

Thanks !

15 hours ago, newbie alert said:

Brilliant.. captured some detail there

Thanks, yes, I think most of the detail came from the Ha which was very strong in comparison to the OIII.

14 hours ago, Rodd said:

Great image.  In the way of CC,I think focus may be a wee bit soft.  Hard to tell though.  Could be processing (software is often so uncooperative!).

Rodd

Thanks for the comment Rodd.

I think any softness is likely to come from the processing rather than the focusing.  The OIII signal was quite weak and hence I needed to apply quite a bit of noise suppression to this part of the image. However, I found that I could recover sharpness by applying the strong Ha signal as a Lum layer. 

4 hours ago, jazza said:

I really like this one!

Thanks jazza 

[swag72]

I like the framing and colours you have chosen...... Nice

[alan4908]

5 hours ago, swag72 said:

I like the framing and colours you have chosen...... Nice

Thanks Sara   - my choice of colour scheme was primarily driven by my desire to make the image appear "natural" looking. I do like the star colours that also result.

Alan 

[graemlourens]

Hi Alan.

Great image. Its always very difficult for me to decide on the color balance of narrowband images, and i'm not really consistent at all over all my images.

My first thought when i saw your image was 'too orange, and not blue enough', but its my brain being biased by all the standard images out there (including mine :/ )

I like your approach and you should keep thinking out of the box!

Kind regards, Graem

[cfpendock]

Very, very nice.  And the detail is excellent.  Personally, I think the colours you have chosen suit the image  very well.

Chris

[alan4908]

3 hours ago, graemlourens said:

Hi Alan.

Great image. Its always very difficult for me to decide on the color balance of narrowband images, and i'm not really consistent at all over all my images.

My first thought when i saw your image was 'too orange, and not blue enough', but its my brain being biased by all the standard images out there (including mine :/ )

I like your approach and you should keep thinking out of the box!

Kind regards, Graem

Thanks Graem -yes, it is interesting the types of colours that you can obtain in narrowband processing. Having tried virtually all combinations (), I finally settled on the scheme shown which I have to admit was partially driven by the resultant star colours, which I quite like.  

1 hour ago, cfpendock said:

Very, very nice.  And the detail is excellent.  Personally, I think the colours you have chosen suit the image  very well.

Chris

Thanks for the comment Chris.

Alan