Barnard's Loop

[Z3roCool]

*Re-Edit Below* Always wanted to get Barnard's loop but with my unmodded DSLR really struggled. Down in the Sahara at the moment on a road trip...moon is not great but gave it 4.5 hours and this is the outcome...processing leaves a fair bit to be desired but still learning and can keep coming back to the data. Hope you like. 

[Craney]

I think you have pretty much got everything Orion has to offer in that shot !!   Amazing coverage.

[john2y]

Don't reduce the stars that much, instead of round spots, you got bunch of weird shapes. Sometimes less is more, maybe also reduce the green in the background so it's more natural and don't push so hard on denoising, some noise is always better than details drowning in the smoothness ? 

[Z3roCool]

9 minutes ago, john2y said:

Don't reduce the stars that much, instead of round spots, you got bunch of weird shapes. Sometimes less is more, maybe also reduce the green in the background so it's more natural and don't push so hard on denoising, some noise is always better than details drowning in the smoothness ? 

I have a lot to learn on processing! The original image is so full of stars you cannot see the DSO's...it is rather green, hard to notice until someone points it out then really obvious :D

[john2y]

Regarding the green it also depends on the colour reproduction of the monitor you're using. Mine tends to boost green everywhere   if you'd be willing to upload the stacked tiff I could take a look at that and see what can be done when it's processed in Pixinsight and don't worry the processing is like walking, once you learn it, it's just a routine. 

[Z3roCool]

I would really appreciate that.  

Autosave.tif

[Z3roCool]

Tried another edit...maybe a little better.

[john2y]

So after looking at it. I understand that you've always wanted the Barnard's loop and I'm sorry to crush your dream but the combination of the faintness of the nebula with the original filter in your dslr that cuts a lot of the red light coming in, you'd need a lot more time to pull it off in a way that it would be really visible. The data is great, that's a fact, the loop is there too, you've demonstrated it above but the loops visibility closely corresponds with the noisiness of the image. After a few minutes I've realised that if I sacrifice the loop I can work with great data, Horshead, Orion nebula, Witch head and a ton of molecular dust. I've done a background extraction, colour cal, background neutralisation, I stretched it using histogram and then created star mask to shrink them and also protect them when I started playing with the curves on the background, then I removed some of the green, made stars a little less saturated and the Orion nebula a little more HDR, then I moved it to photoshop to remove some of the chromatic aberration you had there but not all since it would desaturated most of the image. It's 15min job so it's not great but again, you have really good data so it was really easy working with it. If I had more time I would also get rid of some of the hues in the background. 

[SIDO]

Very Nice, good to see it ?

[Z3roCool]

9 hours ago, john2y said:

So after looking at it. I understand that you've always wanted the Barnard's loop and I'm sorry to crush your dream but the combination of the faintness of the nebula with the original filter in your dslr that cuts a lot of the red light coming in, you'd need a lot more time to pull it off in a way that it would be really visible. The data is great, that's a fact, the loop is there too, you've demonstrated it above but the loops visibility closely corresponds with the noisiness of the image. After a few minutes I've realised that if I sacrifice the loop I can work with great data, Horshead, Orion nebula, Witch head and a ton of molecular dust. I've done a background extraction, colour cal, background neutralisation, I stretched it using histogram and then created star mask to shrink them and also protect them when I started playing with the curves on the background, then I removed some of the green, made stars a little less saturated and the Orion nebula a little more HDR, then I moved it to photoshop to remove some of the chromatic aberration you had there but not all since it would desaturated most of the image. It's 15min job so it's not great but again, you have really good data so it was really easy working with it. If I had more time I would also get rid of some of the hues in the background. 

Wow, really nice...yep, the unmodded DSLR is for sure holding back the loop. Nothing for it other than getting myself a Mono camera and some filters ? Thanks again for spending time looking at this. Very much appreciated ?