Monkey Head nebula no luck

[69boss302]

I shot the monkey head a while ago but am having no luck processing it. I have tried several things now and not at all loving the results. I really dont know if its the way I captured the light frames, the way I stacked or the way Im processing. I dont know if anyone is bored enough to give it a try but I have it attached here. If you have any tips whatsoever on how I capture/stack/process Im all ears! Always looking to improve my techniques.

Thank you!

Bob

 

MoneyHead.TIF

[Taman]

8 hours ago, 69boss302 said:

I shot the monkey head a while ago but am having no luck processing it. I have tried several things now and not at all loving the results. I really dont know if its the way I captured the light frames, the way I stacked or the way Im processing. I dont know if anyone is bored enough to give it a try but I have it attached here. If you have any tips whatsoever on how I capture/stack/process Im all ears! Always looking to improve my techniques.

Thank you!

Bob

 

Hi Bob, yes I was bored and had a quick look at your image! The only problem I can see is your back focus needs adjusting. The stars in the corners are pointing outwards, so the flattener needs to be further away from the camera. 

Here are 2 versions, a quick stretch in SiriL, showing the star problem, and a processed cropped version. Starnet++ was used to remove the stars, before colour balancing, sharpening and noise reduction in Photoshop. I also reduced the stars very slightly before adding them back in.

Hope this helps!

CS, Tony. 

 

[69boss302]

Oh wow thank you! OK so it is definitely my processing that Im having an issue with and not my capturing.  My back focus has since been adjusted and its better now but still not 100% I need to adjust a little bit more.  Thank you for this, it looks great!!!

bob

[michael8554]

Tony also rotated the image 90 degrees, to show The Monkey Head looking left.

Michael