Part 1 of the Taurus Molecular Cloud

[carastro]

Planning to get a mosaic with this being the right side of 2, but this relies on me being at an Astro camp at the right time of the year and the weather playing ball !!!!!

Struggled with the processing on this, and this is about the 5th version I have come up with. 

Samyang lens @ f2.8 and Atik460EX

Bortle 4 at East sussex Campsite

Lum 22 x 600secs (3h 40m)

Red 9 x 200secs binned x 2, Green 10 x 200secs binned x 2, Blue 9 x 200secs binned x 2

Total 5 hours 13m 20"

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by carastro

[simmo39]

V nice! Stars look great.

[WolfieGlos]

Love it! And only 5 hours. Can't wait to see the second half of this.

[CCD Imager]

Nice work, looking forward to the mosaic!

Adrian

[uhb1966]

Awesome! I guess you are using narrowband filters?

[tooth_dr]

47 minutes ago, uhb1966 said:

Awesome! I guess you are using narrowband filters?

This target is broadband primarily to get the dust, not narrowband. Requires dark skies and no moon ideally!

[carastro]

1 hour ago, uhb1966 said:

Awesome! I guess you are using narrowband filters?

No, this was LRGB

[windjammer]

Lovely - the deep midnight blue areas really bring out the dusty red nebula.  Stars in the nebula have dark ring artefacts round them ?

Simon

[ollypenrice]

It is a nice one. It looks as if you have a bit of the dreaded tile pattern showing through from star removal. I find I can't predict when I'm going to get this and when I'm not, nor do I have any real fix for it. I hope the developer is working on it. In this case it's only slight.

Olly

[carastro]

On 23/09/2023 at 23:46, windjammer said:

Lovely - the deep midnight blue areas really bring out the dusty red nebula.  Stars in the nebula have dark ring artefacts round them ?

Simon

Yes, think that’s where l tried to reduce their size.  Think l may have to do process 6. 

[ollypenrice]

22 minutes ago, carastro said:

Yes, think that’s where l tried to reduce their size.  Think l may have to do process 6. 

Try reducing contrast in the stars-only when they are a layer on top. You can do this using the Ps Brightness and Contrast tool or do it manually in Curves, lifting the bottom of the curve and pulling the top down.

Olly