Cone Nebula HaLRGB

[Rodd]

I finally managed to inert the ha into the red and lum channels without destroying the image.    I decided to create a new thread, as the old one is gone anyway.  FSQ 106 with .6x reducer and ASi 1600.  I took Olly's advice and captured more red, blue and lum subs, though I also captured significantly more Ha due to the Moon being up for a couple of hours early.  The final tally is

Red 344 60 sec

Green 223 60 sec

Blue 282 60 sec

Lum 355 60 sec

Ha 60 300 sec

If this is an improvement many thanks to Olly and Wim for helping my find my way in the darkness.  And if it is not an improvement, its nobodies fault but my own.  My thoughts are the stars are still not colored enough, either individually saturated or variably saturated as a group.  And the Ha still isn't right.  There seems always to be dark regions in my image that are not present in others work.  At least they have structure in this version.  Could be the conditions I suppose.  Don't know.  But I do know that this is it, for good or ill--this my attempt at the cone in HaLRGB.  I wanted to try an HaLRGB of this target for a long time.  Now I have had my fill (and then some).Maybe I will try again next year.  

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

very nice image..

regards

Martin

[souls33k3r]

Absolutely love your work Rodd. You're being harsh on yourself mate, this is a fantastic image and excellent processing skills shown. Well done buddy 

[x6gas]

I agree - this looks terrific and well worth the effort.

HaLRGB can be tricky to get right but it can give great results on lots of emission nebulae so hopefully you can re-charge your batteries a bit and re-energise for future targets.

[PhotoGav]

Oh dear, another hyper-critical astrophotographer concerned that their image is only 98% perfect...!

This is a lovely image, Rodd: great field of view, good framing, sharp details and sympathetic processing... what’s not to like?! Sure, every image could be improved, somehow, but you’ve done a great job with this one.

It is surprisingly hard to combine Ha data into an RGB image without it all going a bit ‘processed’. I’d be interested to know your approach with this image.

Finally, out of interest, does calibration, registration and stacking take forever with that number of subs?!

[Rodd]

3 hours ago, artem said:

very nice image..

regards

Martin

Thanks Martin

Rodd

[Rodd]

3 hours ago, souls33k3r said:

Absolutely love your work Rodd. You're being harsh on yourself mate, this is a fantastic image and excellent processing skills shown. Well done buddy 

Thanks Souls-you are too kind

Rodd

[Rodd]

3 hours ago, x6gas said:

I agree - this looks terrific and well worth the effort.

HaLRGB can be tricky to get right but it can give great results on lots of emission nebulae so hopefully you can re-charge your batteries a bit and re-energise for future targets.

Thanks gas man.  If you don't mind me asking, what type of heavenly body has the moniker "Brown Trousers?

Rodd

[Rodd]

3 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Oh dear, another hyper-critical astrophotographer concerned that their image is only 98% perfect...!

This is a lovely image, Rodd: great field of view, good framing, sharp details and sympathetic processing... what’s not to like?! Sure, every image could be improved, somehow, but you’ve done a great job with this one.

It is surprisingly hard to combine Ha data into an RGB image without it all going a bit ‘processed’. I’d be interested to know your approach with this image.

Finally, out of interest, does calibration, registration and stacking take forever with that number of subs?!

Thanks Gav,

Calibration isn't bad if you have your master flat, dark, flat darks etc already made.  Then, to calibrate 300 subs might take 2 minutes.  I have never timed it though.  I find registration takes the longest.  maybe 45 min for 300 subs?   But again, I have never timed it.  As far as adding the Ha,  I tried multiple methods on this and none seemed to work....until I finally was able to get it.  I'd be lying to you if I told you how I did it--My brain is fried and I can't recall whish method was the one that worked.  maybe a hybridization of a couple.  I am sorry.  In all honesty-it probably wasn't done quite right.  

Rodd

 

[PhotoGav]

43 minutes ago, Rodd said:

As far as adding the Ha,  I tried multiple methods on this and none seemed to work....until I finally was able to get it.  I'd be lying to you if I told you how I did it--My brain is fried and I can't recall whish method was the one that worked.  maybe a hybridization of a couple.  I am sorry.  In all honesty-it probably wasn't done quite right.

Ha ha! I know that feeling - so much tinkering that you have no idea which bit of tinkering it was that makes it look acceptable!

[x6gas]

1 hour ago, Rodd said:

Thanks gas man.  If you don't mind me asking, what type of heavenly body has the moniker "Brown Trousers?

Rodd

A scarred one?!  I obviously have no control over that - IIRC it was a joke that the admins did for a while.  I've been away from the forums for several years so I'm guessing that most people have now moved on to the next rank and that it will disappear when I hit the 3000 posts needed to be a White Dwarf.

[Rodd]

41 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Ha ha! I know that feeling - so much tinkering that you have no idea which bit of tinkering it was that makes it look acceptable!

Exactly.  Normally, when I add Ha to galaxies it works very well and its easy for some reason.  I use PI and am not sure you do, so this might not mean much, but I extract the red channel from the RGB (linear state) and use pixel math to remove the red contimuum from the Ha stack (remove all signal leaking over from the red wavelengths).  Then I insert the cleaned Ha into the RGB (only the red channel using pixel math), and I also insert a little Ha into the Lum in linear state--about 20-30% is all.  Then I render the RGB and Lum nonlinear and insert the lum using LRGB combination.    I tried this method for adding Ha to nebulae but it was much trickier, so I tried the light vortex tutorial for adding Ha to RGB (I used that on my first image posted last week).  I wasn't completely happy with the results.  So I tried again and this post is the result.  I definitely did not use the NBRGB script this time--so it must have been the pixel math approach. 

Rodd   

[Rodd]

7 minutes ago, x6gas said:

A scarred one?!  I obviously have no control over that - IIRC it was a joke that the admins did for a while.  I've been away from the forums for several years so I'm guessing that most people have now moved on to the next rank and that it will disappear when I hit the 3000 posts needed to be a White Dwarf.

That's funny--must explain Gav's Astroholic too.

Rodd

[PhotoGav]

22 minutes ago, Rodd said:

Exactly.  Normally, when I add Ha to galaxies it works very well and its easy for some reason.  I use PI and am not sure you do, so this might not mean much, but I extract the red channel from the RGB (linear state) and use pixel math to remove the red contimuum from the Ha stack (remove all signal leaking over from the red wavelengths).  Then I insert the cleaned Ha into the RGB (only the red channel using pixel math), and I also insert a little Ha into the Lum in linear state--about 20-30% is all.  Then I render the RGB and Lum nonlinear and insert the lum using LRGB combination.    I tried this method for adding Ha to nebulae but it was much trickier, so I tried the light vortex tutorial for adding Ha to RGB (I used that on my first image posted last week).  I wasn't completely happy with the results.  So I tried again and this post is the result.  I definitely did not use the NBRGB script this time--so it must have been the pixel math approach. 

Rodd   

Interesting. You are right, I'm not a PI person, I use PS. However, the principles sound very much the same, just different specific methods to achieve the results. One issue I encounter in Photoshop when using Ha in the Luminance layer is that the lovely rich red colours are muted to salmon pinks. There is a way around this, but I am never totally convinced that it works perfectly and always wonder what it is doing to other colours in the image. We are slightly digressing from things, but it is interesting hearing how results are obtained.

[PhotoGav]

22 minutes ago, Rodd said:

That's funny--must explain Gav's Astroholic too.

Rodd

I changed that myself in my profile ages ago... I have no recollection of how or where and haven't ventured back into that area to change it to anything else since! I have not been cured of my astroholicism yet, so it seems appropriate to maintain that tag!

[Rodd]

7 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Interesting. You are right, I'm not a PI person, I use PS. However, the principles sound very much the same, just different specific methods to achieve the results. One issue I encounter in Photoshop when using Ha in the Luminance layer is that the lovely rich red colours are muted to salmon pinks. There is a way around this, but I am never totally convinced that it works perfectly and always wonder what it is doing to other colours in the image. We are slightly digressing from things, but it is interesting hearing how results are obtained.

I think the key is adding only a small amount to lum.  The idea, I think, is that the Luminance bandwidth does include a bit of Ha--but only a bit, so you add just a little to round out the profile.  I know for galaxies, you don't want screaming ruby red beads in the spiral arms.  

Rodd

[Rodd]

10 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

I changed that myself in my profile ages ago... I have no recollection of how or where and haven't ventured back into that area to change it to anything else since! I have not been cured of my astroholicism yet, so it seems appropriate to maintain that tag!

So we do have control over that?  maybe not anymore?   BTW.........there is no cure

Rodd

[x6gas]

3 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

I changed that myself in my profile ages ago... I have no recollection of how or where and haven't ventured back into that area to change it to anything else since! I have not been cured of my astroholicism yet, so it seems appropriate to maintain that tag!

Ah yes, maybe we could change them ourselves for a bit...

[Miguel1983]

Fantastic image ! well done indeed ?

[Rodd]

11 minutes ago, Miguel1983 said:

Fantastic image ! well done indeed ?

Thanks, Miguel.  

Rodd

[ollypenrice]

Certainly getting steadily even better. It's quite frustrating for me because I know just what I'd do in Ps from here but haven't a clue in PI. Good to see the reflection nebula back and with attitude.

Olly

[Rodd]

10 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Certainly getting steadily even better. It's quite frustrating for me because I know just what I'd do in Ps from here but haven't a clue in PI. Good to see the reflection nebula back and with attitude.

Olly

Well--you may not know how to do what you want to do in PI, but you know what you want to do, given that, I would be able, in time, to figure out how to go about achieving that end.  It seems you have something in mind?

Rodd

[ollypenrice]

Just now, Rodd said:

Well--you may not know how to do what you want to do in PI, but you know what you want to do, given that, I would be able, in time, to figure out how to go about achieving that end.  It seems you have something in mind?

Rodd

Yes, more star colour for starters. The pretty open cluster of tiny stars to the right can give a wonderful golden colour and on the left hand side the stars seem rather white. Then I'd want to differentiate between the colour of the main Ha nebulosity and the small isolated red nebula in the upper right. In my RGB data they are distinctly different colours, the main nebula looking more magenta than the small isolated one. But do they look different in your RGB? I only preserved that difference because I could see it before adding the Ha.

Olly

[Rodd]

7 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Yes, more star colour for starters. The pretty open cluster of tiny stars to the right can give a wonderful golden colour and on the left hand side the stars seem rather white. Then I'd want to differentiate between the colour of the main Ha nebulosity and the small isolated red nebula in the upper right. In my RGB data they are distinctly different colours, the main nebula looking more magenta than the small isolated one. But do they look different in your RGB? I only preserved that difference because I could see it before adding the Ha.

Olly

In my RGB data the little nebula above the dark V structure is bimodal--reddish near the lower edge and progressively bluer toward the upper right-hand corner.  That was the original RGB, before I added 4-5 hours of data, which I did not process into a savable image--it went right into the HaLRGB.  I certainly could use a new tweaked RGB for blending and modify the HaLRGB.  From memory, the added data really helped the RGB image--I remember thinking it might be better than the HaLRGB.  the stars may be a lost cause without an entire reprocess, which is inevitable, but some time has to pass. 

Rodd 

[Rodd]

10 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

But do they look different in your RGB?

Here is my new LRGB image--I wish there was a way to add Ha at this point--in nonlinear state as opposed to in linear.  It seems to me that this image has better depth and better star color.

Rodd