ngc 281 - the Pacman Nebula

[wimvb]

This is the last toned H-alpha image. There's now a nice set of four images, but I think I'm done with this little experiment.

This is the Pacman nebula. 4 hours of H-alpha, collected under a full moon at 26 Dec. Processed in PixInsight.

Edited January 3 by wimvb

[Adreneline]

Interesting presentation of the Ha data Wim. It is always good to experiment with different ways of interpreting / processing data - helps to fill the cloudy nights!

I've been looking at your recent tone mapped images and I can't help but feel that the tone mapping has had the effect of 'flattening' the image. I would have thought that four hours of Ha data would have given more depth, especially with your PI processing skills. Maybe it is just me and my old eyes - or the MacBook Retina screen - or something. Great image - great framing - it's just not quite working for me - sorry.

Any chance you can post a side-by-side with the straight Ha - no tone mapping - just grey-scale?

Adrian

P.S. Just had three hours of clear skies here - just enough to grab 10 x 300s of S, H and O with my new StellaMira 90ED - it's only taken four weeks to get a "first narrowband light". Patience is a virtue - so I'm told.

[wimvb]

7 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

Interesting presentation of the Ha data Wim. It is always good to experiment with different ways of interpreting / processing data - helps to fill the cloudy nights!

I've been looking at your recent tone mapped images and I can't help but feel that the tone mapping has had the effect of 'flattening' the image. I would have thought that four hours of Ha data would have given more depth, especially with your PI processing skills. Maybe it is just me and my old eyes - or the MacBook Retina screen - or something. Great image - great framing - it's just not quite working for me - sorry.

Any chance you can post a side-by-side with the straight Ha - no tone mapping - just grey-scale?

Adrian

P.S. Just had three hours of clear skies here - just enough to grab 10 x 300s of S, H and O with my new StellaMira 90ED - it's only taken four weeks to get a "first narrowband light". Patience is a virtue - so I'm told.

Thanks for the feedback, Adrian. I must agree that the image looks a lot flatter here, when viewing it on my tablet, than it is when I view it on my processing computer screen. I can post the b/w image later.

[wimvb]

On 30/12/2023 at 01:02, Adreneline said:

Any chance you can post a side-by-side with the straight Ha - no tone mapping - just grey-scale?

Sorry for the late reply, with the holidays and all, I totally forgot about it. But here's a side-by-side of the starless Ha and the toned image. Also the raw Ha image with only a simple stretch applied.

[Adreneline]

11 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Sorry for the late reply, with the holidays and all, I totally forgot about it.

Absolutely no problem - thanks for sending them through.

To my eye the greyscale image has slightly more contrast and hence more 'depth' - but it is marginal - interesting though.

Maybe it is all down to the bad old Moon laughing at you and mocking your attempts to image 😆

Adrian

 

[wimvb]

52 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

Maybe it is all down to the bad old Moon laughing at you and mocking your attempts to image 😆

My Ha filter has a bandwidth of 7 nm, quite wide for a narrowband filter. A 3 nm would give more contrast, but since I rarely image nebulae, I hadn't planned investing in one.

[Adreneline]

9 minutes ago, wimvb said:

My Ha filter has a bandwidth of 7 nm, quite wide for a narrowband filter. A 3 nm would give more contrast, but since I rarely image nebulae, I hadn't planned investing in one.

Maybe time to treat yourself.

Adrian