NGC 2359 Thor's Helmet

[rubecula]

I collected data for this back in January and have had three goes at processing it.  I think this is the best so far. 😀

It's an HOO image composed of 14 x 600s Ha and 19 x 600s OIII.  Data capture using SGP and PHD2.  Processed with APP and PS.  Attempts to reveal the Ha nebulosity at the one o'clock position greatly overexposed the OIII in the main part of the image.  In the end I overlaid the main part of the image with a section cut fron a less stretched image.

Thanks to help with my previous NGC 3628 image I can see that it needs more work on star colour (add some RGB?) and sky background colour (too black).  And it still looks noisy in places.🙁

Thanks for looking,

[x6gas]

Wow - that looks great!  Thor's Helmet is still on my wish list but it looks like you have some really good data there Robin!

[alan potts]

That very nice indeed Robin, my half baked effort with nowhere near as much data at the right angle looked like a snail.

Alan

[TerryMcK]

Geat work Robin

[MarkAR]

Well done, looks great.

[rubecula]

Thanks guys for your kind comments.

[sloz1664]

Great image Robin. Your processing efforts have really brought out the detail in NGC 2359.

Steve

[MartinB]

Well done Robin, the level of detail is excellent.  It is quite a challenge from the UK.  It does look a little blue.

[rubecula]

2 hours ago, MartinB said:

  It does look a little blue.

Interesting comment Martin.  Do you mean too bright a blue or the wrong shade?  Looking online there are all sorts of shades from bright green to a darker blue.  I did look online before I finished it (but when is an image ever finished?) and ended up where I am.  I would appreciate your further feedback.

Thanks

[tooth_dr]

50 minutes ago, rubecula said:

Interesting comment Martin.  Do you mean too bright a blue or the wrong shade?  Looking online there are all sorts of shades from bright green to a darker blue.  I did look online before I finished it (but when is an image ever finished?) and ended up where I am.  I would appreciate your further feedback.

Thanks

Robin

I think the image looks really good, a great job!  I opened it in photoshop and checked various parts of the background and in most cases the blue 2-3 times the value of red and green. The nebula looks decent but I think the background overall is a little blue.
 

Adam.  

Edited June 16, 2020 by tooth_dr

[rubecula]

Ah, I see background too blue, I thought Martin meant the nebula!   It must be my monitor as it looks quite black to me, in fact too black.  I tried the method Ian (x6gas) showed me to get the background to 23/23/23  which worked a treat in my NGC 3628 image but made a complete mess of this one so I left it alone.  How to remove the blue in the background without spoiling the nebula?

Thanks Adam

[rubecula]

Does this look any better?  I tried Colour Balance in PS and moved the Blue/Yellow slider towards yellow.  The blue value is almost the same as the red and green. Other than the Ha being more prominent and the nebula slightly less blue the background still looks the same on my monitor.

Thanks

[rubecula]

Or maybe this is better. The last one the adjustment was made to the midtones in this one the adjustment is to the shadows, which has had less impact on the nebula.  But on my monitor I can't see any change to the background.

Thanks

[tooth_dr]

@rubecula I find that my monitors and phone all look different so for the background I tend to trust the figures.  Sometimes even 23/23/23 feels dark to me.  I think I’m your example the black point went down to as low as 3 in some places, so you might need to go back a few steps. I dont think it can be recovered once it’s been clipped.

But I don’t want to get too hung up on this, it’s a really nice image of a difficult and faint target. 

Edited June 16, 2020 by tooth_dr