Horsehead attempt

[Tzetze]

Not happy with the colour calibration here. With no background, I found it to be a very troublesome step. I think it may be close but not right. Detail has been lost in the horse and is suffering from clipped colours or poor calibration. The halos around the stars are less than pleasing too, perhaps a better star mask will help in this regard.

The sensor is not perpendicular to the light cone. Top right hand corner stars look ok in shape. All other corners are elongated and pointed towards the 'good' corner. Need to work on improving this.

In all, there's plenty wrong with this image and I'm sure there's more that I'm not aware of.  I think it's got potential however and can be saved. Would greatly appreciate any tips in how to do so.

Lum 10x 600s 1x1

RGB 10x 150s 2x2

[MartinB]

Well there's plenty that is good in there Mike, especially the reflection nebula, that is very impressive.  The Ha isn't punching it's way through, this could be related to how you applied the luminence layer and how you added Ha to the image.  I see you are a PI user so can't help you a deal since I predominantly use PS.  Those star halos are very easy to deal with in PS although it is a bit tedious.  You make a duplicate layer, select colour as the blend mode and then apply the healing brush to all the haloed stars, works like magic!  However, that is blasphemy on planet PI.

[Tzetze]

7 hours ago, MartinB said:

Well there's plenty that is good in there Mike, especially the reflection nebula, that is very impressive.  The Ha isn't punching it's way through, this could be related to how you applied the luminence layer and how you added Ha to the image.  I see you are a PI user so can't help you a deal since I predominantly use PS.  Those star halos are very easy to deal with in PS although it is a bit tedious.  You make a duplicate layer, select colour as the blend mode and then apply the healing brush to all the haloed stars, works like magic!  However, that is blasphemy on planet PI.

Wow, thanks Martin. Unfortunately, there will be no Ha punching through until I at least get a Ha filter which isn't on the near horizon. I've only used LRGB filters here, although they are Astrodon and I believe they really deliver. I certainly have no complaints with their quality.

As for the star halos, well I think better star control through the process is key. If I were more happy with the data I would certainly rework this image and may come back to it again sometime. In the meantime, there's a much improved data set on the Northern Trifid keeping me occupied.