M45 the Pleiades

[Laurin Dave]

Messier 45 the magnificent Pleiades imaged through my Esprit100/SX46 and ASI1600/GT71 side by side scopes on a Mesu 200.  Imaging sessions recently have been somewhat disrupted by cloud so after sorting I was left with the following data, Esprit100SX46  32x600s Lum,  9x600s R, 5x600sG, 12x600s B, GT71ASI1600 42x120s R, 26x120s G and 23x120sB. In total 5.3hrs Lum, 2.9 hrsRed, 1.7hrs Green and 2.8hrs Blue.  I also had 1 hr of Lum through my Esprit150/SX46 which was used sharpen up the brighter stars. Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.  

As I had combined colour data from an ASI1600 there were signs of microlensing around the brighter stars. To increase colour saturation I convert to LAB mode in Photoshop and increase saturation in the a and b channels, examining these showed that the majority of the microlensing was in the b channel..  so I had a go at fixing it by splitting the channels into L, a and b then for the b channel creating duplicate layers for each affected star, then selecting the area around the star using the lasso, creating a clipping mask, blurring the selected area by 5 pixels and setting its blend mode to lighten...  I then selected all the  layers, copied them and pasted the merged result onto the b channel in the Lab image...  it seems to have worked quite well..   Could do with some more RGB to add more colour to the dust, for when the clouds and rain leave.

Thanks for looking

Dave

 

[tooth_dr]

Such wonderful stars!  Your processing is on point, delicate and detailed. 

[MartinB]

Superb Dave.  The faint background dust is so smooth.  The stars look perfect.  Personally I think the colour is spot on.

[Mr Spock]

Incredible image. I love the colour and the delicate detail. Top quality processing 👍

[geeklee]

Beautiful image Dave.  As already covered, the processing and star work especially are brilliant. 

[04Stefan07]

Nice colour and great detail!