Heart Nebula. "First light" processing with a new MacBook Pro

[Ouroboros]

Last night I managed to get a couple of hours of acceptable subs on the Heart Nebula (IC 1805) in Cassiopeia.   Captured using an Askar Colour Magic dual band filter (hydrogen and oxygen).  It appears to have given a reasonable image despite the  full Moon and only a couple of hours data. 

This was also (kind of) "first light" processing with PixInsight with my new MacBook.  I have had my old MacBook for about ten years and it was really showing its age.  It was so slow that it would take over night to process files in WBPP.  This new one took 30 minutes to process 64 lights, 60 flats and 60 darks flats.  

I would prefer a slightly deeper red on that hydrogen.  Not quite sure how to do that.  All I've done is to turn up saturation basically. And the background could be slightly darker I think.  

Telescope: Askar  FRA300.  AM5 mount. OAG.  Askar dual band Ha+OIII 6nm filter. ZWO ASI2600 OSC.  ASIair Plus. 64x120s subs.  Processed in Pixinsight only. 

[ONIKKINEN]

2 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

I would prefer a slightly deeper red on that hydrogen.  Not quite sure how to do that.  All I've done is to turn up saturation basically.

Did you run it through SPCC? You can input the filter bandpasses in it and get as close to right as possible. I think it should result in a deeper red, could be wrong of course as i dont have this filter.

[Ouroboros]

3 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Did you run it through SPCC? You can input the filter bandpasses in it and get as close to right as possible. I think it should result in a deeper red, could be wrong of course as i dont have this filter.

Yes. I always use SPCC now. I selected the narrow band filter setting and input the 6nm bandwidth.  I am not really sure what SPCC tries to do with narrow band one shot colour images anyway.  I assume SPCC tries to 'recalibrate' as it were the colour of stars according to the data in the Gaia data base corrected, presumably, for the fact that the data was filtered by the two wavelengths passing through the dual band filter.  I assume it then applies the correction factors to the entire image.   The resulting colour is often somewhat underwhelming at that stage, which is why of course we like to push up the saturation a tad. However and strictly speaking perhaps we should accept those initial colours as  closer to the 'truth' of what's really there. 

[geeklee]

5 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

I always use SPCC now.

This is a useful video from PixInsight themselves - explaining how to use SPCC (or ColorCalibration) with narrowband data (changing the White Reference etc).  Apologies if you've seen this / doing this all already!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB22afHqIoI&ab_channel=PixInsight

 

[symmetal]

You can change the orange to a reddish hue using the Curves tool in PI, selecting the 'Hue' option and making the curve similar to this. Hues along the bottom axis are mapped to the corresponding hue on the vertical axis. With red being at the ends of the axis and not moveable there's less flexibility than you have with greens and blues though.

Alan

[Ouroboros]

Thanks. Just tried it. That's a good trick, @symmetal

[Ouroboros]

59 minutes ago, geeklee said:

This is a useful video from PixInsight themselves - explaining how to use SPCC (or ColorCalibration) with narrowband data (changing the White Reference etc).  Apologies if you've seen this / doing this all already!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB22afHqIoI&ab_channel=PixInsight

 

I'll watch that. Thanks.  

[Ouroboros]

13 hours ago, geeklee said:

This is a useful video from PixInsight themselves - explaining how to use SPCC (or ColorCalibration) with narrowband data (changing the White Reference etc).  Apologies if you've seen this / doing this all already!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB22afHqIoI&ab_channel=PixInsight

 

Having watched this I discovered I was using SPCC more or less in the way in the way recommended. I then decided to experiment by trying various different settings: narrow band or OSC, photon flux or spiral galaxy etc.  I tried it three quite different ways and d’you know what …… it made absolutely no discernible difference to the result. 😀  Weird huh? 

[geeklee]

2 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

it made absolutely no discernible difference to the result. 😀  Weird huh? 

😅 I think the video describes why there can be minimal difference in some cases and goes on to use BackgroundNeutralization and ColorCalibration.  I do tend to use the latter and haven't tried SPCC for narrowband for a while.

EDIT: I forgot the final segment - did you use the last method where duo band filters are discussed on NGC281?

Edited January 28 by geeklee

[Ouroboros]

1 hour ago, geeklee said:

😅 I think the video describes why there can be minimal difference in some cases and goes on to use BackgroundNeutralization and ColorCalibration.  I do tend to use the latter and haven't tried SPCC for narrowband for a while.

EDIT: I forgot the final segment - did you use the last method where duo band filters are discussed on NGC281?

Yes, I zipped forward to that bit actually.

I have also found a video which describes how to add filter profiles including the Askar ones to SPCC process. I’ve yet to do that.

https://youtu.be/bAwK5Isk-U8?si=qIbadumopWHr8izn