My first post to the big boys group - IC1396 - the elephant's trunk

[powerlord]

Hi chaps, this is my first pic I'm posting to the non-beginners imaging group. At 6 months experience with a telescope, and 5 taking photos, and 1 month with a mono camera - I'm very much still a beginner, but I'm really please with the way this one is coming on - so I'm hoping it's good enough to be on here ?

This is my first project in mono and NB. First time shot NB, first time mono, first time editing mono, etc, etc.

ASI1600, 72ED, EQ5 EQstar pro mount plus some on my EQ6R-pro when it arrived. shot with asiair pro, guiding with an asi120m.

It's 7.5 hours Oiii, 7 hours Sii, 6 hours Ha.

At present mono stars. Tonight I'm hoping to grab some RGBL for the stars only and will pop them in instead of the mono from Ha that I've got in there just now.

My aim was the focus (sic) in on the trunky bit bursting out, and to get clarity enough to just about see the elephant's head. Which I reckon I've got.

It was stacked in APP, but then edited all in Affinity Photo, with starnet++ used to process stars separately.,

I should have waited till I got colour stars.. but hell.. I've been shooting this for a month now - 7 sessions.. and feel like I want to post it now 'cause firstly - I'm kinda pleased how it's coming out, and secondly to get some feedback so I can work that into the final edits once I get colour stars.

So err be gentle, but not too gentle 🙂

I've maybe kinda saturated it a bit much, though I also kinda like it that way. the stars clearly need doing properly. My Oii was even after 7.5 hours not great - I'm in Bortle 5/6.  Plus I'm just learning what works here really - some shots were gain 125 @360, some at 139 @360, some at 300 @360, then last 2 sessions at gain 200, 600 seconds. I did sort of forget that my framing at the start of the night isn't going to be the same at the end of the night - so I have had to crop in more than I thought. If I was gonna do it again, I might stick with 300mm or so and shoot it with my  canon 300mm F4 L.

I tried putting it into startools, but it was crashing all the time trying to load the fits. And when I did get them loaded it just kept producing horrible pictures. I'm sure it's entirely down to the 'pilot' here.. but I have read the manual, etc - and I thought I'd sussed it for OSC stuff... but gave up for this with it.

I found affinity photo was fine for it tbh. I then decided I'd use starnet++ to strip out the stars and work on the composition and processing without them, and stick em back at the end. Which I really like as a process.

I reaaaallly want to shoot something new now, as it feels like I have elephant on the  brain. So other than shooting some short RGB for the colour stars tonight I'm on to a new target... not sure what, but might give either the samyang 135 or samyang 14 a try...

stu

Edited August 3, 2021 by powerlord

[symmetal]

Well done.  It's certainly very colourful. 😊

Alan

[Lee_P]

Wow, that's vibrant! I like the framing too

 

[powerlord]

I admit I may have gone a bit overboard with colour saturation... when i get the coloured stars in there I'll tone it down a lot I think. It didn't look quite as garish on my imac monitor in my defence.🤔

[powerlord]

A slightly more subdued version..

[Ags]

It is really good, but I am not sure about the green area top right.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Ags

[powerlord]

yeh i think im missing some sii from that area, so all I've got is the Ha. that was the lowest part when i was shooting, so it might have got swamped in light pollution ?

here's the sii for the top right - nowt there. only one to get anything was the ha - hence the green

Edited August 3, 2021 by powerlord

[carastro]

That's pretty darn good for so short a time at imaging.  My only comment is a constructive one in that I think you may have overdone whatever noise reduction technique you used.

Adding in coloured stars is very nice, but the technique for doing this in the processing can be somewhat challenging to do it nicely.  If you've got this far in 6 months, I look forward to seeing what you will be doing in a years time. 

Carole 

[tomato]

Wonderful detail around the Elephant’s Trunk region, and certainly no shortage of colour. I prefer the toned down version but I always think with narrowband there is a lot of scope to adjust the colours to individual taste.👍

[simmo39]

Nice work. just a lovely image.

[powerlord]

9 hours ago, carastro said:

That's pretty darn good for so short a time at imaging.  My only comment is a constructive one in that I think you may have overdone whatever noise reduction technique you used.

Adding in coloured stars is very nice, but the technique for doing this in the processing can be somewhat challenging to do it nicely.  If you've got this far in 6 months, I look forward to seeing what you will be doing in a years time. 

Carole 

Thanks Carol, I think you are right. At the time I Thought I'd maybe went a bit far. I pushed it to get rid of grain noise while not losing detail, but it has went a bit 'painterly'. I appreciate your comments, especially as your images are some of my favourites.

Coloured stars: ah.. Well took subs last night, so will have a go today and see what I can do.

One of the best things about AP of course, is I can learn what I can for now, leave it a few months for something else, thrn come back to the raw data and do a completely new image with it.

Edited August 4, 2021 by powerlord

[powerlord]

7 hours ago, tomato said:

Wonderful detail around the Elephant’s Trunk region, and certainly no shortage of colour. I prefer the toned down version but I always think with narrowband there is a lot of scope to adjust the colours to individual taste.👍

Thanks, I Hit my goal which was to see that freckin elephant!

 

[Clarkey]

As others have said, maybe a little colourful. However, for such a short time imaging I think you should be really pleased with the result. Now you have the data you can re-process as many times as you like until you are happy with the final result. I often reprocess multiple times.

As a relative beginner myself I appreciate the learning curve you need to go through. I would not be afraid of posting on the Deep Sky forum rather than beginners - I have posted some much worse images on here. It is always worth getting the feedback of some expert imagers.

[newbie alert]

First if all a big well done, 6 months is no time and there's a lot of positives in there to show...I'm no pro but one of the first thing I look at in a ele-trunk image is the double star  in the trunk area, I like to see it as a double, some even get to split it and define it as a double.. 

Other than to go a little less aggressive on the saturation and noise reduction I think you have the data there, quite a good imager once said " less is more" which I think is about right.. but as it's your image you can do with it what the heck you want.. just keep the posts coming..

[powerlord]

14 minutes ago, newbie alert said:

First if all a big well done, 6 months is no time and there's a lot of positives in there to show...I'm no pro but one of the first thing I look at in a ele-trunk image is the double star  in the trunk area, I like to see it as a double, some even get to split it and define it as a double.. 

Other than to go a little less aggressive on the saturation and noise reduction I think you have the data there, quite a good imager once said " less is more" which I think is about right.. but as it's your image you can do with it what the heck you want.. just keep the posts coming..

is this the double you mean ?

[newbie alert]

Yep, that's it

[carastro]

Quote

Wow that close up and orientation, looks like "ET Phone home".

Carole 

[callisto]

10 minutes ago, carastro said:

Wow that close up and orientation, looks like "ET Phone home".

Carole 

It does Lol 😄

[powerlord]

ha! I can't see that - I reckon I might start a 'what you see in a DSO' thread - and folk need to annotate the pic!

Here's where I see the elephant,because I'm now thinking as obvious as it is to me, maybe its as obvious as ET is to you!