NGC6946 The Fireworks Galaxy

[kirkster501]

The Fireworks Galaxy with TEC 140 and Atik 460 and Astrodon LRGBHa (3nm).

36 x 5 mins Lum 1x1, 14 x 5mins in Each of RGB 2x2 and 14 x Ha 2x2.

I think the data pool is in advance of my processing capabilities but this is the best I've done so far.  Will keep playing.

[MarkAR]

Pretty good, though the dark background suggests you might have clipped the black point and lost some of the feint detail.

[kirkster501]

A slight edit:

[kirkster501]

I'm not happy with this and will return to it, the data I have deserves a better final outcome than I achieved here.  Upon reflection, I am not happy with the detail in the galaxy.  The 1x1 luminance shows much more detail and it has somehow been lost in the LRGB combination in the midst of trying to control the star sizes.  Star control is my perennial problem!

[ollypenrice]

Good call from Mark and a very successful edit.

Olly

[kirkster501]

A slight retweek, using a convoluted starmask on the RGB master during the LRGB combination process as mentioned by Rogelio Bernal Andreo in his books.  The L stars do not then make such a contribution to the final image's stars resulting in less star bloating. My slight issue with this is that the RGB was binned 2x2 and I feel soem of my stars are a bit "blocky".  I think this technique has preserved more of the luminance's detail in the combined result leading to more detail in the galaxy.   I think my days of a "blind" LRGB combination are over and masks are needed in some cases.

As I  said in another thread, you can achieve the same in Photoshop much more easily by using a simple mask and playing with the opacity levels on the overlay layer.

A little monkey on my back is saying drop the background sky level a little more but I lose the extremely faint outer halo if I do.

Edited October 4, 2020 by kirkster501