NGC2403

[Jonny_H]

Hi all,

I thought I would give NGC2403 a go last night. I didn't get as long as I would have liked. 20 x 300s lights, 25 x 300s darks, 60 flats and 60 bias stacked in APP.

My only confession is I haven't strictly processed this yet other than using my phones default editing functions.

I'll have a go in PI later in the week. Although to be honest my phone probably does a better job of it than me! 😩

 

[Jonny_H]

So........ I finally had a play in PI although as previously mentioned i'm not convinced that my phone hasn't done a better job than me!  I will let the audience decide! 

I'm not very good at making the background darker without impacting the galaxy.......in PI at least.  Any pointers?

Edited April 16, 2021 by Jonny_H

[geeklee]

Well done @Jonny_H I think that's on the way to a more detailed and balanced image in the second one.  Tighter stars, more varied colour, still got the detail with more potential.

You can try creating a range mask or even extract the Luminance and use that as a mask to brighten up the areas with lots of signal - this would of course impact the stars too without more masking!  You can also work with curves to brighten up above the background level.

If you used some noise reduction, it could maybe be eased off on the galaxy (with an inverted Luminance mask for example).

I had a quick go at the attached PNG and the faint arms are still there and ready to be pulled out a little more.

[Jonny_H]

3 hours ago, geeklee said:

Well done @Jonny_H I think that's on the way to a more detailed and balanced image in the second one.  Tighter stars, more varied colour, still got the detail with more potential.

You can try creating a range mask or even extract the Luminance and use that as a mask to brighten up the areas with lots of signal - this would of course impact the stars too without more masking!  You can also work with curves to brighten up above the background level.

If you used some noise reduction, it could maybe be eased off on the galaxy (with an inverted Luminance mask for example).

I had a quick go at the attached PNG and the faint arms are still there and ready to be pulled out a little more.

Thank you for this.

I haven't used masks yet in PI (I am relatively new to it still) but will have a go later on.

I can't promise it will be any better though! 😁

[geeklee]

2 hours ago, Jonny_H said:

I haven't used masks yet in PI (I am relatively new to it still) but will have a go later on.

I can't promise it will be any better though! 😁

There's a few good tutorials out there.  A quick win will be a Luminance mask (Image | Extract | Lightness (CIE L*) or clicking this -  ) and inverted for noise reduction.  Looking at the dimensions and a heavy stretch you may still have some stacking artifacts so take a few minutes to prepare the image with a DynamicCrop (this will also help with background removal).