Heart and Soul

[Thorney]

After many nights of failing to get both targets in the same frame I finally got it how I wanted it. The plan is to get this image printed  to hang on the wall in our new borns bedroom. I may revisit this when time allows to see if I can do better but for now I’m rather happy with it. 
Shot over 2 nights. 38x600 & 40x300. 30 darks for each night. Gain 100 -5c 

Asi2600mc…..Redcat 51……Optolong L extreme…… heq5 pro……ASIair pro. 

Any comments welcome. To my untrained eye I feel as I’ve done to much noise reduction so the detail isn’t as sharp as could be. 

[Adreneline]

2 hours ago, Thorney said:

Any comments welcome. To my untrained eye I feel as I’ve done to much noise reduction so the detail isn’t as sharp as could be. 

These things are so subjective - it's a great image and with excellent framing but as you say I think it may be a tad over smoothed. For what it's worth I think it could take a bit more of a stretch as well. I just ran it through PI quickly and stretched it a bit more, I tried to put a bit of the detail back (not easy on a jpg) and I also realigned the RGB histogram to improve the colour balance and I got this (screenshot only):

There is so much nebulosity in this fov I like to try to tease that out - again a very subjective thing - you must do what is right for you.

Great idea hanging it on the wall in the new born's bedroom.

Adrian

[Thorney]

Hi Adrian. Thank you for this, appreciate the time you took to have a look. it does look a lot better after more of a stretch so I’ll give it a go and see what I can bring out. I’ll also see if I can go back through the steps I took and ease off on the smoothing.   

[MartinB]

Looking great.  You've done quite a severe star reduction and this can give nebulosity quite a smooth look.  Personally I prefer the stars to be a bit less attenuated but this is pure personal choice.  You obviously have some very nice data to play with and I am certain there will be a very nice print going up in your little one's bedroom!