M78 my best worst image

[assouptro]

Hi Starpeople! 

It’s been an awfully long time since I have posted an image on here mainly due to the atrocious weather and some equipment issues.

I have been trying to complete a new image of the horse head and flame (Atik 383 &rev Astro ed100) which has taken me a couple of months to get the data on but as I was about to take some of my final broadband images I noticed a frost on my sensor! 
I’ve been trying to deal with that now for a couple of weeks, drying out the camera, baking desiccant tablets etc and in the meantime the sky cleared on the 6th of Feb with a 26%moon so I attached my faithful Atik 460 to my revelation Astro ed100 and had my first ever  go at M78! 
 

It’s such a difficult capture from bortle 5/6 and to try in one night seemed fool hardy! 
 

I managed to bag 2hr48min lum (8min subs) 20 min of each rgb (2x2 2min subs)

and another 2 hr ha on a second night, 10th of Feb (63%moon)

I spent a long time trying to squeeze something out of the data. It wasn’t easy. I am used to narrowband processing with lots of data normally 

I think I would like to add to this someday, maybe with a faster scope and a darker sky? 

In the meantime here is my crunchy over processed jpg 😊

vertical for phones and tablets

 

Horizontal for laptops and monitors 

 

Thanks for looking,  criticism welcome 

Bryan 

[vlaiv]

I only once tried that target and indeed - it's not easy from light pollution.

Maybe try binning your data to improve SNR? Looking at 100% - stars are not quite pin point that they can be, so maybe there is a bit of room to trade (missing) resolution for SNR?

[assouptro]

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

I only once tried that target and indeed - it's not easy from light pollution.

Maybe try binning your data to improve SNR? Looking at 100% - stars are not quite pin point that they can be, so maybe there is a bit of room to trade (missing) resolution for SNR?

Thanks for the input Vlaiv

Are you suggesting software binning? I’ve never done that before, although I’ve read about it with cmos cameras as I believe you don’t bin in hardware like with ccd? 
My ccd rgb data is binned (hardware) 2x2 but there is only 20 min of each so not great snr

I was processing mainly starless initially  but I probably added the stars too early as I kept on tweaking the data resulting in a bit of bloat. 

If you do mean software binning, what software are you suggesting? And would you bin the final result or bin earlier on? Would you bin starless or with stars? 
Sorry for all the questions

Cheers 

Bryan

[vlaiv]

47 minutes ago, assouptro said:

Thanks for the input Vlaiv

Are you suggesting software binning? I’ve never done that before, although I’ve read about it with cmos cameras as I believe you don’t bin in hardware like with ccd? 
My ccd rgb data is binned (hardware) 2x2 but there is only 20 min of each so not great snr

I was processing mainly starless initially  but I probably added the stars too early as I kept on tweaking the data resulting in a bit of bloat. 

If you do mean software binning, what software are you suggesting? And would you bin the final result or bin earlier on? Would you bin starless or with stars? 
Sorry for all the questions

Cheers 

Bryan

Yes, software binning. It is only thing to do at this stage since you already captured the data. It works the same regardless of the source of data (CCD or CMOS) - at this stage.

Since you binned your RGB data in hardware already, I doubt you'll get anything from binning that, but you'll need to do it to match lum data as well.

Take all your data while still in linear stage before you start any processing and bin each stack (lum, r, g, b) and then process data as you normally would.

I use ImageJ for binning - it is as simple as load fits, then do Image / Transform / Bin (choose x2 and average) and afterwards - save image as again fits.

 

[assouptro]

57 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Yes, software binning. It is only thing to do at this stage since you already captured the data. It works the same regardless of the source of data (CCD or CMOS) - at this stage.

Since you binned your RGB data in hardware already, I doubt you'll get anything from binning that, but you'll need to do it to match lum data as well.

Take all your data while still in linear stage before you start any processing and bin each stack (lum, r, g, b) and then process data as you normally would.

I use ImageJ for binning - it is as simple as load fits, then do Image / Transform / Bin (choose x2 and average) and afterwards - save image as again fits.

 

Thanks Vlaiv

Thats a really helpful detailed reply, I appreciate you taking the time to explain 

I guess it wouldn’t hurt to start again, I’ve already done it twice and it’s not like I’m missing any clear dark skies at the moment! 
 

Thanks again

Bryan 

[Catanonia]

This a terrible target from LP regions. 

I have been trying this for years and want to try it now with my rasa, but not had a chance.

This image, so much better than my previous attempts and love the FOV.

You can tell the noise is being controlled with the resolution and seeing, but a great image and if I could get close to that, I would be happy.

[assouptro]

4 hours ago, Catanonia said:

This a terrible target from LP regions. 

I have been trying this for years and want to try it now with my rasa, but not had a chance.

This image, so much better than my previous attempts and love the FOV.

You can tell the noise is being controlled with the resolution and seeing, but a great image and if I could get close to that, I would be happy.

Thanks for the input Catanonia 

I’m really pleased you like it! 
I don’t think I’ve ever worked that hard to squeeze out details

I honestly didn’t expect much and it’s been a great project to test how far I can push data before it just looks ridiculous! 

Thanks again for the kind words

Bryan 

[powerlord]

I tried that one myself a month ago - very tricky. You've got some good detail there.

stu

 

[ollypenrice]

I'd suggest ditching the Ha and putting the time into broadband. Barnard's loop, strong in Ha, is really out of shot here and I don't see the Ha having made much of a contribution.

It strikes me that you have everything in place bar sufficient data. The processing looks very good and on a target with trickily high dynamic range.

Olly

[assouptro]

15 hours ago, powerlord said:

I tried that one myself a month ago - very tricky. You've got some good detail there.

stu

 

Thanks for the comment powerlord

I wish I had more time and data to do this justice

Bryan

[assouptro]

14 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I'd suggest ditching the Ha and putting the time into broadband. Barnard's loop, strong in Ha, is really out of shot here and I don't see the Ha having made much of a contribution.

It strikes me that you have everything in place bar sufficient data. The processing looks very good and on a target with trickily high dynamic range.

Olly

Thanks for the comment Olly

I added the Ha to the red channel as I have seen some versions of M78 with a subtle Ha background also when the next opportunity arose for me to image anything there was a 62% moon and my 383 was still suffering from moisture in the imaging chamber (hardly surprising with the weather we have had recently) so I decided to try and gather some Ha data to add to my M78 mix.

I do plan on reprocessing this data as recommended by Vlaiv and I will take your advice dropping the Ha to see what I come up with

Thanks again 🙂

Bryan