My 'Happy Christmas' dataset's here.

[wimvb]

13 hours ago, gorann said:

Realized that there was a bit more to do on my version of the image, so here it is with a somewhat darker sky, more dust and subdued red stars.

Definitely more of the faint interaction dust in in this latest version, without pushing the noise. But you have a dark ring around that small needle galaxy below ngc 5195. Maybe a result of blending layers?

[gorann]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

Definitely more of the faint interaction dust in in this latest version, without pushing the noise. But you have a dark ring around that small needle galaxy below ngc 5195. Maybe a result of blending layers?

You got really sharp eyes Wim @wimvb(or mine are rather weak). Yes, it probably happened when I blended in a HiPass layer a bit too fast. But anything broken can also be fixed with layers, so I hope it now looks ok. The dust really extends much further than this but it then becomes a compromise with how much noise is acceptable, as you indicate.

PS. I hope you did not make me distroy the first photographic evidence for dark matter.....

[wimvb]

3 hours ago, gorann said:

The dust really extends much further than this but it then becomes a compromise with how much noise is acceptable, as you indicate

@ollypenrice's post shows how far the dust extends. (Btw, more data in that pic)

 

[Jonk]

On 29/12/2018 at 14:58, wimvb said:

I always keep the dark deringing setting as low as possible, starting at 0, then increase from there. I hardly ever use the bright deringing settings, and usually keep iterations below 50 - 75. Then I use deregularization to control the background. With finetuning, I sometimes succeed without using a mask. 

Ok cool, I'll have another go as my result is nowhere near what it could be. The learning curve is infinite!

[Laurin Dave]

Well here's another go using a mixture of Pixinsight and Photoshop. Followed Steve Richards advice in 'Dark Art or Magic Bullet' for adding the Ha and the colour saturation and layering techniques that Olly outlined earlier in the thread and this time avoided destroying all the colour with the sort of PI noise reduction the I'm used to doing on my own data! Looks a lot better to me.  Learnt a fair bit from this exercise so once again thanks Olly for the opportunity to process some excellent data.

Dave

 

 

[Stu Wilson]

Brilliant data Olly.

Ive never ever tried using Mono Data before as ive only had my QHY8L for a year so not even thought about the move to mono until now.

Had a play anyway and this is what ive got. Not sure if ive done things properly or not?

Happy New Year

Clear Skies.

Stu

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, Stu Wilson said:

Brilliant data Olly.

Ive never ever tried using Mono Data before as ive only had my QHY8L for a year so not even thought about the move to mono until now.

Had a play anyway and this is what ive got. Not sure if ive done things properly or not?

Happy New Year

Clear Skies.

Stu

Looks good Stu. I'd just have a glance at the colour balance. Background's looking rather green to my eye.

Olly

[Stu Wilson]

28 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Looks good Stu. I'd just have a glance at the colour balance. Background's looking rather green to my eye.

Olly

I tried again. I Think this versions better.

Turns out my day wasn't wasted waiting for a delivery that's not coming, ive learned something ?

Stu

[happy-kat]

Bit later getting to do this but here is my go. I tried a background extraction on the Ha file and layer blended it in but I did not like that so no Ha in mine. Processed entirely in StarTools and saved as PNG using IrFanView. 

@Stu Wilson Did a quick reprocess with a slightly harder stretch which brought out more of the outer spiral. Also a softer approach to the spirals. Same as before StarTools start to finish and IrFanView for png save.

[happy-kat]

I could/might redo it and give it a sightly harder initial stretch so the final background is a couple points lighter.

[AstroAndy]

Hello all

So, I invested some more time in this and did a reprocess. Dropped the background a bit, sharpened things up, brightened M51, and did a soft process on star color.

- Andy -

[happy-kat]

Lots of goes shared of processing Ollie's data and with differences like colour and softness, and I gather there may be no right or wrong way, but is there a process for this target considered the more right way? Was there something we were aiming at.

[sloz1664]

Just picked up my belated Christmas present? having returned from a wonderful Caribbean cruise. Thank you Olly and have a wonderful New Year.

Steve