Soul nebula as a beginner

[Bluesboystig]

My 5th project since starting in this hobby and I'm very happy with it, even though I only collected less than 3h of data in total (original plan was for at least double that but boy it was cold out there). This was also the first time using a lot of new kit all at the same time: the asiair mini, the guide scope and guide camera, and the newly modded Canon 2000d. All in all I'm quite pleased, I know it can be much much better, but I'm planning on keep adding data to this, an hour here, a couple of hours there, hopefully ti will soon be an incredible picture. Any comment, suggestion, feedback more than welcome of course!

Acquisition: 30x300" subs, 4 darks, 15 flats, 15 biases. Bortle 5/6. No moon.

Equipment: SA GTI, WO z61 with flattener, Canon 2000d modded, Optolong L-Extreme, Asiair Mini, ZWO Mini Finder-Guider & ASI 120MM-Mini guide camera. 

Processing details:

Siril: crop, background extraction, photometric colour calibration, green noise removal. Separated the nebulosity from the stars using Starnet. 

GIMP: stretched the nebulosity, separated the nebula from the background and applied levels and curves, adjusted brightness and contrast.

Siril: Star desaturation and full resynthesis. Star recomposition. 

Topaz Denoise AI for noise reduction.

[Lee_P]

This is great, good job! Are you able to control everything remotely, to avoid ending sessions because it's too cold for you? 

[Bluesboystig]

Just now, Lee_P said:

This is great, good job! Are you able to control everything remotely, to avoid ending sessions because it's too cold for you? 

Thanks! Theoretically yes, thanks to the asiair, but I wasn't at home, I went to a darker location just out of town. But to be fair, the L-Extreme should allow me to shoot from the garden (still learning my ways around all this really). My fault for not dressing for success. 

[Lee_P]

Just now, Bluesboystig said:

Thanks! Theoretically yes, thanks to the asiair, but I wasn't at home, I went to a darker location just out of town. But to be fair, the L-Extreme should allow me to shoot from the garden (still learning my ways around all this really). My fault for not dressing for success. 

Ah, gotcha. You've got the beginnings of a really stunning image there. I think the trick is to have long integration times, and the secret to that is controlling everything remotely so your rig collects data while you sleep!

[Bluesboystig]

1 minute ago, Lee_P said:

Ah, gotcha. You've got the beginnings of a really stunning image there. I think the trick is to have long integration times, and the secret to that is controlling everything remotely so your rig collects data while you sleep!

Thanks so much for the feedback. I think that two things play up in my mind: I'm still scared of meridian flips 😧 and I'm scared that a passing bird will poo on the telescope (this is probably my paranoia hahahah)..

[ollypenrice]

Very good. I'm pretty sure there are processing tweaks still available to you, as well. Most beginners bring the black point in far too far and clip out faint data. I think your black point could come in a bit and give you more contrast - but softly, softly!

Maybe ease the green down a whisper as well?

Olly

Edited October 16, 2023 by ollypenrice
typo

[Lee_P]

5 minutes ago, Bluesboystig said:

Thanks so much for the feedback. I think that two things play up in my mind: I'm still scared of meridian flips 😧 and I'm scared that a passing bird will poo on the telescope (this is probably my paranoia hahahah)..

Oh yes, I remember well the fear of meridian flips. The ASIAIR is pretty good with those though. Maybe sit and watch a few to help with your confidence. Bird poo, I know that fear too! Never happened to me, despite my telescope being a big target, and plenty of seagulls and pigeons overhead. But hey, we've got refractors, it wouldn't be too hard to clean bird poo off!

[tomato]

That's a fine image, well beyond beginner class in my book. You have applied a light touch on the processing which is to be commended, most folks when starting out are tempted to push their data too hard. Hence as has been commented, you could push the data a little further, more subs will help with the noise. 

Meridian flips are a bit scary at first, but well worth mastering, as you will almost double your available imaging time on the session.

 

[Bluesboystig]

47 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Very good. I'm pretty sure there are processing tweaks still available to you, as well. Most beginners bring the black point in far too far and clip out faint data. I think your black point could come in a bit and give you more contrast - but softly, softly!

Maybe ease the green down a whisper as well?

Olly

Thanks for the feedback, I was really trying hard not to overdo it, and I'm learning my way through image processing, so definitely there is still a lot to learn and to improve. I'll try play around with the data and try increase contrast  

 

37 minutes ago, tomato said:

That's a fine image, well beyond beginner class in my book. You have applied a light touch on the processing which is to be commended, most folks when starting out are tempted to push their data too hard. Hence as has been commented, you could push the data a little further, more subs will help with the noise. 

Meridian flips are a bit scary at first, but well worth mastering, as you will almost double your available imaging time on the session.

 

Woa, thanks so much! Noise is a nightmare, but I have already accepted the harsh reality that for crisp clear result integration time is king! Planning on adding hours more of data to this project, fingers crossed the weather gods will play ball! 

47 minutes ago, Lee_P said:

Oh yes, I remember well the fear of meridian flips. The ASIAIR is pretty good with those though. Maybe sit and watch a few to help with your confidence. Bird poo, I know that fear too! Never happened to me, despite my telescope being a big target, and plenty of seagulls and pigeons overhead. But hey, we've got refractors, it wouldn't be too hard to clean bird poo off!

Agree, meridian flips are next on the list of things to master. This time I already had a lot of stuff to try out for the first time, I felt like I'd have pushed my luck a little.. plus I was freezing the proverbial..  BTW, thanks for all the info on your website, I'm reading everything on it, and your images are something incredible! Absolutely inspiring stuff!

[Bluesboystig]

Managed to get 3 more hours of data on the Soul Nebula. The AsiAir mini was so good to reframe exactly on the same patch of sky and helping with rotating the camera for good framing (managed to get it 0.5 degrees off, pretty decent I'd say).

In total now I have around 5h40mins of integration time, 68x300" subs, 11 darks, 30 flats, 30 biases. Night 1: Bortle 5/6. No moon. Night 2: Bortle 6, 57% Moon. Equipment: SA GTI, WO z61 with flattener, Canon 2000d modded, Optolong L-Extreme, Asiair Mini, ZWO Mini Finder-Guider & ASI 120MM-Mini guide camera. 

Processing details:

Sirilic: pre-process multiple sessions.

Siril: crop, green noise removal. Separated the nebulosity from the stars using Starnet. 

GIMP: stretched the nebulosity, separated the nebula from the background and applied levels and curves, adjusted brightness and contrast.

Siril: Star recomposition. 

Topaz Denoise AI for noise reduction.

There are some elongate stars in the top left corner, not sure why, I have the field flattener, and the stars in the rest of the image look ok. I can also see some sort of circular artifact around some stars, no idea what that is. When I tried to do star resynthesis in Siril it would get much worse, so I opted to leave the stars just a bit less stretched.  Quite surprised as well by the difference in colour, the previous image was very much red/pink. Again, any comments/feedback appreciated.