Wrestling with a huge Spanish dataset - what do you think?

[Whistlin Bob]

With a few other members of my local astro club I'm in a syndicate at Roboscopes. December has been pretty sparse, so we've not seen much come through. However, we were gifted a rather chunky 50hr data set on the starfield around the Cocoon nebula. Now, most of my images consist of a few hours of data, grabbed between clouds in light polluted Staffordshire and I like to think that I've developed a bit of proficiency in compensating for the conditions I'm imaging in. Working with a rich gorgeous data set turns out to be a different beast entirely. Let me show you what I mean- here's 35 hours of broadband data with a simple stretch on it:

This took no skill at all on my part: it's just a calibration and stretch- most of my effort was devoted to hanging my jaw open at the number of stars in it. Once you get past the staggering richness of the star field though, it's obvious that there's a heap of structure here, so I set Star Xterminator to work on both this and the Ha data. Somehow, in the gaps between all of those stars it managed to pull out this structure:

I always have a lot of trouble capturing dust at home, so this had me very excited. I also have to take my hat off to the software- that point and click star removal is one clever bit of computing.  I didn't want  to lose sight of all of this, so I dimmed the stars down as I combined the stars back in, so as not to lose the structure of the nebulosity

 

I'll hold my hands up at this point and admit that I'm very much in the pretty pictures school of Astrophotography, I'm not too concerned with making my images appear natural. My question is really to find out whether others also find this attractive, or would you prefer it toned down a bit- perhaps something closer to the original RGB?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

What might work nicely is a slow crossfade between the top image and your final one.

[tomato]

It is certainly spectacular but the colours are perhaps a bit too strong for my taste. Having said that, a lot of images from remote sites seem to have vivid colours, maybe its hard not to display them that way when you have hours and hours of quality data.

[Xiga]

7 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

What might work nicely is a slow crossfade between the top image and your final one.

I had the exact same idea when I imaged the cocoon a few months back 🙂

 

[Xiga]

7 hours ago, Whistlin Bob said:

With a few other members of my local astro club I'm in a syndicate at Roboscopes. December has been pretty sparse, so we've not seen much come through. However, we were gifted a rather chunky 50hr data set on the starfield around the Cocoon nebula. Now, most of my images consist of a few hours of data, grabbed between clouds in light polluted Staffordshire and I like to think that I've developed a bit of proficiency in compensating for the conditions I'm imaging in. Working with a rich gorgeous data set turns out to be a different beast entirely. Let me show you what I mean- here's 35 hours of broadband data with a simple stretch on it:

This took no skill at all on my part: it's just a calibration and stretch- most of my effort was devoted to hanging my jaw open at the number of stars in it. Once you get past the staggering richness of the star field though, it's obvious that there's a heap of structure here, so I set Star Xterminator to work on both this and the Ha data. Somehow, in the gaps between all of those stars it managed to pull out this structure:

I always have a lot of trouble capturing dust at home, so this had me very excited. I also have to take my hat off to the software- that point and click star removal is one clever bit of computing.  I didn't want  to lose sight of all of this, so I dimmed the stars down as I combined the stars back in, so as not to lose the structure of the nebulosity

 

I'll hold my hands up at this point and admit that I'm very much in the pretty pictures school of Astrophotography, I'm not too concerned with making my images appear natural. My question is really to find out whether others also find this attractive, or would you prefer it toned down a bit- perhaps something closer to the original RGB?

The starless image is really quite striking. In particular the Ha 😲

[Whistlin Bob]

Thanks very much for the feedback- I think I'll have a go at the cross fade 😀. @tomato I think it's more the amount I've saturated them- probably just a little too carried away!!! 

[gorann]

Very impressive demonstration of what StarXT can do! I would experiment with reducing the blue a bit (using a curve on the blue channel) since much of the blue appear to be halos from the bright blue stars (so artifacts of the optics that can be suppressed with good conscience). That would also make the Ha signal less purple.

[powerlord]

very nice. is the background calibrated ? you say just a simple stretch ? so if not, maybe do that first ? good chance there's more dust in there ?

 

[ollypenrice]

What I've never seen before is the Ha signal made visible from a braodband dataset. Remarkable and very attractive. Personally, I don't think the way forward with this image would be to blend hard and soft stretches, I think the deep image and the classic one are different and equally valid. I'd keep both separately.

I think there might be room for a tweak of the star layer before finally combining it with the starless. This is just a hunch but I've been working on dozens of StarX workovers recently! I don't know what software you use but, in Photoshop, I'd have the stars-only layer placed over the starless in blend mode screen. I'd control star size by using the mid point slider in levels but I'd try boosting the contrast in the star layer as well. This is a dead easy way of tightening them up and giving them more pop. My instinct would be to try that. They seem just a tad vague to my eye.

For me the slightly magenta reds of the Ha layer are right. This is what we see when we look through an Ha filter in daylight. However, I agree with Wim that the blues are a bit high and maybe a bit cyan? That's the only thing I'd be inclined to tone down.

I hope you don't think I'm interfering! It's just that you've posted a truly inspiring piece of work...

Olly

Edit: I meant to say 'Ha signal' rather than 'Ha layer.'

Edited January 12, 2023 by ollypenrice