Western Veil Nebula and Pickering's triangle Player One Ares C Pro

[Magnum]

Caldwell 34 the Western Veil Nebula and Pickering's triangle captured tonight.

30 X 5 min subs

Camera: Player One Ares C Pro, Gain 125.

Telescope: Sharpstar 61EDPHII f4.5 triplet

Filter: Optolong L Enhance dual narrowband.

Mount: EQ8 Pro.

Guided, Captured, Stacked, DDP stretch, Flatten Backgrond in MaximDL 5, Graxpert Ai model, Starnett++ Mac M1, Noise Xterminator, Photoshop 2023.

No Darks or Flats.

Location: Kent, UK.

Bortle 6

Edited November 7, 2023 by Magnum

[Ouroboros]

Very nice colours and nice image generally. You must have been up half the night processing. It is a fascinating set of objects  though isn’t it?

Coincidentally I had another go at widefield imaging the whole Cygnus Loop last night.   I packed in about 11pm after getting three hours of data. I want to get a few more hours of data before processing.

I had my first go at dual band imaging this region a few days ago. How did you find separating processing the stars?   I found stretching the stars to give a satisfactory star field difficult. Did you separate the stars at the linear or nonlinear stage? 

[Magnum]

Thanks.

I have my own workflow that’s probably different to most , I make 2 different DDP stretches of the image in MaximDl, one is a mild stretch for the stars then a strong stretch for the nebula . Then I run them both through starnett++ . I take the starless of the big stretch and process that in photoshop until it looks like the final starless image above, then I add the stars from the mild stretch back in as the very last step. 
 

lee

 

 

[Ouroboros]

Interesting. I was wondering whether doing some initial stretch to the whole image followed by star separation might have provided a better approach.

I had to look up DDP as I have not come across it. It is available in Pixinsight, but seems to be considered obsolete compared with other methods. That’s not to say it is in the applications you’re using of course, and anyway seems to work for you. 

[Magnum]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

Interesting. I was wondering whether doing some initial stretch to the whole image followed by star separation might have provided a better approach.

I had to look up DDP as I have not come across it. It is available in Pixinsight, but seems to be considered obsolete compared with other methods. That’s not to say it is in the applications you’re using of course, and anyway seems to work for you. 

LOL the Whole of maxim dl5 was supposedly obsolete a decade ago yet I prefer it for the pre photoshop processing steps.