Tadpoles and Flaming Stars in Ha

[powerlord]

I can't decide whether I like this better with no stars, or a tiny little suggestion of stars.

Anyway, it's my first mosaic - two parts taken with my Altair 80ED and ASI1600.  3 hours of 10 min subs. More of the flaming star than of the tadpole.

APP did a great job of joining the subs. I thought I'd add some S and O.. and maybe I will sometime, but I think it looks so strong with just the Ha. And even a little suggestion of stars hides some of the nebula dust - which is powerful in itself.

It's amazing how just a little bit of stars changes the feel of the whole piece.

Anyway, comment below which you like best.

 

 

No stars-

 

[vineyard]

I think the first one, although perhaps I'd make the stars a bit brighter to add more geometric contrast to the v different texture of the nebulosity?

[powerlord]

Well, here it is with full stars. I reckon I must be in the minority then - I prefer it with no stars.

[mackiedlm]

Thats a great image and I definitely prefer it with the stars.

[beka]

I also prefer the one with  full stars.

Best

[Adreneline]

On 28/03/2022 at 22:11, powerlord said:

no stars, or a tiny little suggestion of stars.

This is a tricky one! I certainly like to produce a starless image because I enjoy the uninterrupted view of the very thing I am trying to image - the nebula! That said I think it is always best to present both images - full stars first and starless second.

I am finding we now have excellent tools at our disposal to remove stars and they are great because I feel they help you process the underlying nebula to best effect. The problem is we don't have equally excellent tools to put the stars back! Star processing IMHO is mega-difficult which is why I don't image clusters; quite frankly I have tried and I am rubbish at it. Stars make or break an image and there is no magic solution that I have found to make it easy to get good results. Variations in the quality of optics, quality of filters, screen resolutions all hit stars first - dodgy colours, halos, mis-shapen - every fault you can think of - and of course being out of focus.

The best tool is your eyes - and sadly mine are getting old

 

[powerlord]

What issues do you have putting stars back ?

All you need to do is create a star mask. With starnet2++ or whatever you use, get your starless image.

then in your editor of choice (mine is affinity photo), put the bottom later as the pic with stars, and the starless one in a layer above.

change the blend mode of the starless later to 'substract'.

you will now see only stars (i.e. a star mask).

choose 'merge visible' to create a new layer which is just this star mask.

Now, change the starless layer blend mode back to normal, and change the star mask layer to 'add'.

you will now be looking at your original pic with stars - however stars are now on a seperate layer. So you can process your stars and your image seperately and blend at the end.

Easiest way is to blend, is to add a brightness/contrast layer to the stars, then you can adjust it as you feel fits the image, but of course you can process them in other ways - e.g. if they are colour, increase saturation. or maybe play with sharpness. Or even, if using @James Ritsons excellent scripts https://jamesritson.gumroad.com/l/jr_astrophotography_macros which has some great scripts for reducing the star numbers, sizes, etc.

stu