Melotte 15

[Jkulin]

Well I tried for this last year and after having a few hiccups aborted and put it off until another year.

Well this has come out different than I expected, I looked at many of the beautiful images by others on here and Astrobin and really wanted to put my own stamp on this, I wanted the colours to be subtle but heavenly without being garish, not to everyone's taste and I will probably look back and think/know I can do better.

This was captured over three nights with a full moon and I tried to time the filters for when the moon was more prolific.

I have got some RGB data for the stars and once I have got to grips with Straton, then will look at adding that.

It is far from perfect, however for me I am rather pleased with the subtle colours.

I have still loads to learn but after 4 years now it is slowly getting better.

Technical Data: -

RC10" Truss
Moravian G2-8300 MkII CCD
Lodestar X2 Guide Camera
QHY-M OAG
Moravian 7 position 2" FW
Chroma 3nm HA, OIII and SII 2" unmounted filters
iOptron 120EC Mount which is finally starting to produce the goods and guiding around 0.3-0.4
8x1200s of each filter, 8 hours total
Processed in PI and finished in PS CC2019
Bortle 5 Skies 19.51sqm

Processed in PI:-

Batch Processed
ABE
Histogram Stretch
TGVDenoise
SHO Combined
Magenta Removal
SCNR - Green
Various Stretches
Miultilinear Transform
Unsharp Mask
Then into Photoshop for a final tweak

Here's the Bumf: -

IC1805 Nebula is in the constellation Cassiopeia. In the central part of the cloud shines Melotte 15, a cluster of giant stars, young and very hot. The ultraviolet radiation from massive stars sculpted this fantastic gas column. Is commonly identified with the name of Melotte 15. The age of the cluster is estimated at a million and a half years and its distance from Earth, about 7,500 light years.

[tooth_dr]

Pretty impressive John! I like the moody and muted colour scheme (don’t look at my recent version of this lol)

6 minutes ago, Jkulin said:

I tried to time the filters for when the moon was more prolific.

An interesting choice, making life harder for yourself?

 

[Jkulin]

30 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Pretty impressive John! I like the moody and muted colour scheme (don’t look at my recent version of this lol)

An interesting choice, making life harder for yourself?

 

Cheers Adam, don't look too closely 🙂

We have had very few clear rnights lately so this was one that I knew I could grab as it was opposite where the moon was moving, I shot Ha when it was at its worst and then OIII when it was opposite as that (so I am advised) is most affected by the moon, its probably the reason why I had to go a bit heavy than I like on the de-noise because of the moons affect.

NB I'm going to have a look at yours noise, as it is bound to be brilliant 🙂

[newbie alert]

Very 3d looking, great work

[DaveS]

You're braver than I am to be taking [SII] and [OIII] in moonlight. Although I got some reasonable HII last night with 3nm Astrodon I will wait until there's much less moon to get more of the rest.

[dave_galera]

John, Have a look at using MureDenoise on your masters before you combine, its absolutely brilliant at removing the noise at the linear stage

Edited September 14, 2019 by dave_galera

[Jkulin]

15 minutes ago, DaveS said:

You're braver than I am to be taking [SII] and [OIII] in moonlight. Although I got some reasonable HII last night with 3nm Astrodon I will wait until there's much less moon to get more of the rest.

It really wasn't a problem Dave (S), I just planned the sessions around it, good filters helped.

15 minutes ago, dave_galera said:

John, Have a look at using MureDenoise on your masters before you combine, its absolutely brilliant at removing the noise at the linear stage

Thanks Dave, is that a script for PI? If it is a plugin for PS then will need to have a look as I have never fully processed an Astro image in PS I just use it to finish things off?

[souls33k3r]

Really impressive John. Hard work has most certainly paid off

[carastro]

I like that, very nice.

Carole 

[dweller25]

Fantastic image 👍

[dave_galera]

17 hours ago, Jkulin said:

Thanks Dave, is that a script for PI? If it is a plugin for PS then will need to have a look as I have never fully processed an Astro image in PS I just use it to finish things off?

Hi John, Its a script in PI Script > Noise Reduction > MureDenoise. It is usually applied straight after the integration process and applied to each master before combining. This post refers:

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=9206.0

Edited September 15, 2019 by dave_galera

[Jkulin]

Thanks Dave, yes after hunting around the PI forum I discovered that it had been incorporated into the scripts.

i’ll have a play with that as I know just the image that needs more noise removal.

[bob-c]

Hi John, this is a lovely image to my eye mate well done. It looks as though you have your mount doing the biz now. I am just starting to guide with mine now, the new firmware seems to be doing the trick for you .

                                                                                      Bob.

[Jkulin]

13 minutes ago, bob-c said:

Hi John, this is a lovely image to my eye mate well done. It looks as though you have your mount doing the biz now. I am just starting to guide with mine now, the new firmware seems to be doing the trick for you .

                                                                                      Bob.

Cheers Bob, you need the firmware 190718, don't install any other version, guiding has been down to 0.3RMS, if you need help then let me know and I can always talk you through it.

[x6gas]

One of my favourite targets and you've done a terrific job...

[Jkulin]

On 16/09/2019 at 07:00, x6gas said:

One of my favourite targets and you've done a terrific job...

Thanks Indeed, it has so much interest in it, it is probably my favourite so far, I may reprocess and then mount it on an Aluminium plate.

[dave_galera]

Hi John, To answer your question on PixInsight forum I use pixelmath as follows:

1. Stars Image = Original Image - Starless Image

2. Work on Starless image as required

3. New Image = Modified Starless Image + Stars Image

And don't forget the Stars Image is just about a perfect star mask as you can get

Hope this helps

[Jkulin]

6 minutes ago, dave_galera said:

Hi John, To answer your question on PixInsight forum I use pixelmath as follows:

1. Stars Image = Original Image - Starless Image

2. Work on Starless image as required

3. New Image = Modified Starless Image + Stars Image

And don't forget the Stars Image is just about a perfect star mask as you can get

Hope this helps

Thanks Dave, not too clued up with Pixel Maths, I tend to use a predefined instance that someone else has designed and then use that as a process icon.

Problem I had was that the Star removal module won't install, so need to fix that first.

I'll have a chat with my mate who is a programmer and see if he can assist with your suggestions, thanks for your help.

[dave_galera]

You literally type in the image names with a minus sign between i.e. Melotte15 - starless

and it will create a new image for you, rename this as "stars" and away you go

[Jkulin]

Brilliant thanks Dave, I thought I was going to have to get involved with some programming which at my age I am useless at