Jump to content

Banner.jpg.b83b14cd4142fe10848741bb2a14c66b.jpg

Pacman Nebula in HaRGB with Atik 383L+ plus modded Canon 40d (NGC 281)

tooth_dr

By tooth_dr
in Imaging - Deep Sky

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 26
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Allinthehead

Allinthehead

Posted
Posted

Beautifully combined.

It's a great little tutorial. So easy to follow and infinitely adjustable.

If when you change the blend mode to lighten you're not satisfied then go to adjustments/levels, or adjustments/contrast and it will only adjust the ha layer. Very easy to find a blend amount to use. Great job with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tooth_dr

tooth_dr

Posted
  • Author
Posted
4 hours ago, blinky said:

Cracking image!

Thanks blinky ??

3 hours ago, peter shah said:

Beautifully processed.... love the star colour

Thank-you Peter. It’s a privilege to have you comment on my image.  

2 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

Beautifully combined.

It's a great little tutorial. So easy to follow and infinitely adjustable.

If when you change the blend mode to lighten you're not satisfied then go to adjustments/levels, or adjustments/contrast and it will only adjust the ha layer. Very easy to find a blend amount to use. Great job with that.

Thanks Richard, and thanks for that link, I would not have been able to process this at all without you sharing this ??

I spent around 5 hours processing the data today, sat in front of the laptop (nursing a hangover from a wine tasting evening that just got a bit out of hand ?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tooth_dr

tooth_dr

Posted
  • Author
Posted
3 minutes ago, AKB said:

Yup, liking that a lot.  Something to aim for!

 

Thanks, actually thought yours was a lot better though ? I’ve still a lot of noise for 4 hours and being particular in using calibration files, I wonder could be a big moon and a 7nm filter that’s adding noise. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
AKB

AKB

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

I’ve still a lot of noise for 4 hours and being particular in using calibration files

What scope was this?  Mine is 200mm.  The noise was OK in the end, but I'm liking the additional help of the Mure denoise script in PI – particularly impressive.

3 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

I wonder could be a big moon and a 7nm filter that’s adding noise. 

I think that's one thing that was screwing up my earlier attempts.  Not to mention the guiding issue I had (which is now solved.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tooth_dr

tooth_dr

Posted
  • Author
Posted
4 minutes ago, AKB said:

What scope was this?  Mine is 200mm.

I used an ED80 with the 0.85x FF so about 510mm at F6.37.

I have a trial of PI currently at my disposal for a few more days but I haven’t ventured into it too much yet.  It’s finding the time to learn new software  

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Xiga

Xiga

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

I've followed a PS tutorial recommended by @Allinthehead for combining Ha with RGB.

Here is the result

It's around 4 hours in 600s subs with the Atik for the Ha and 4 hours in 300s ISO800 subs for colour with the Canon.  Stacked in DSS, processed in PS.

Thanks for looking, comments welcome.

 

Process_Pacman_aligned.jpg

Very nice indeed Adam. Loads of detail on show, and the star colours really finish it off well. I would be tempted to hit it with just a smidge of NR myself, but that's down to personal preference really. 

Would you mind sharing the link you used for combining the Ha and RGB data?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tooth_dr

tooth_dr

Posted
  • Author
Posted
7 hours ago, Xiga said:

Very nice indeed Adam. Loads of detail on show, and the star colours really finish it off well. I would be tempted to hit it with just a smidge of NR myself, but that's down to personal preference really. 

Would you mind sharing the link you used for combining the Ha and RGB data?

 

Thanks Ciaran - what NR routine would you suggest? I remember you saying that you prefer a little noise to looking too smoothed out so that is always in the back of my mind when I’m processing, so I’m sure whatever technique you recommend will be what I’m after too.

Here is the link:

http://bf-astro.com/tutorial/addHa.htm

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Xiga

Xiga

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Thanks Ciaran - what NR routine would you suggest? I remember you saying that you prefer a little noise to looking too smoothed out so that is always in the back of my mind when I’m processing, so I’m sure whatever technique you recommend will be what I’m after too.

Here is the link:

http://bf-astro.com/tutorial/addHa.htm

Ah yes, i remember that link now. I think i might even have it bookmarked somewhere myself. Thanks for the reminder!

As for noise reduction, it is true that i prefer to leave a little noise in there rather than go too heavy on the NR. But more recently i'm starting to up my NR a little now, although i always make sure i apply a good mask to ensure the high-signal areas are excluded. That part is crucial, you don't want to ruin the high-signal areas. In terms of what to use for NR, i always experiment with a few in separate layers and then choose the one i like the most. Funnily enough, the quirks of different images means it's not always the same one i go for! I always try out both of Carboni's actions (Space Noise Reduction, and Deep Space Noise Reduction), i also try out Topaz Labs De-Noise (although it rarely wins imho), and finally Photoshop's own NR offerings within the 'Camera Raw' filter. Carboni's ones are a safe bet most of the time, but in all honesty i'm always impressed with PS's ones. It gives separate control over Luminance and Colour and they really are extremely effective (again when used with a mask, always!), and the Colour one in particular i find extraordinary at cleaning up OSC data. 

Can i also ask, how are you stretching your colour data? Now that you have separated colour data in your workflow, it is probably more important that you preserve it as much as possible. Are you stretching as normal, or are you doing an Arcsinh Stretch? Every time you stretch data a bit of the colour gets washed out, so @sharkmelley put together a great PS routine for doing a colour-preserving stretch in PS. I've saved it as an action, which makes it a doddle to do, and it really keeps soooo much more colour in the image after stretching. Your Pacman nebula already has great colour, including the stars, but it could be worth having a play with this to see if any more could be eeked out, such as with the core of some of the brighter stars. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Xiga

Xiga

Posted
Posted

Forgot to say, there is one other NR routine i've started experimenting with recently, and that is Topaz Labs' 'Adjust' package. It has a preset called 'Shadow Recovery' which is looking pretty useful. Although the default settings are usually waaay too high, so i normally bring them down quite a bit, but once the right level of noise reduction, brightness, and adaptive exposure are found, it does seem to do a better job of cleaning up the noise. I should point out though, i tend to use a strong mask when applying it, so that it only gets applied to the sky background. But from what i've seen so far, rather than attempt to smear the data together to clean up the noise, it seems to brighten the darker pixels to even it out. I still need to test it a bit more, but it's showing promise. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tooth_dr

tooth_dr

Posted
  • Author
Posted

@Xiga found this on Google 

http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/Processing/Colour_Preserving_Stretch/colour_preserving_stretch.html

 

Re my stretching - I start off with levels if needed to adjust bottom on histogram then I stretch the curves and go back to levels.  Done by appearance with no scientific/mathematical basis. I need to look at my technique 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tooth_dr

tooth_dr

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I found a copy of my first Pacman from 2009 on PhotoBucket.  This was taken with a Canon 1000d on a 6"F5Meade LXD-75 from a city centre location.

I've put the two together to show the comparison, all it takes is better gear and a darker site to get an improvement! ?

 

PacmanDSLRCCD.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.