Waves of Vela

[furgle]

Higher resolution here (http://observatory.site/astrophotography/Waves_of_Vela/Waves_of_Vela_20180127.html)


**Image:**

* 40x 360s Hα bin2x2
* 42x 360s SII bin2x2
* 44x 240s OIII bin2x2

Total exposure 12 hours 36 minutes.

**Hardware:**

* Skywatcher Black Diamond ED80
* SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
* QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
* Astronomik 6nm Hα, 6nm SII, 6nm OIII filters
* Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
* Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider



**Location:**

* Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)

**Software:**

* Planning & camera alignment with The SkyX Pro
* Captured with AstroArt 6
* Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
* CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
* CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack.
* PixInsight: Deconvolution, denoise, pixelmath combine (Hα & SII as red, SII & OIII as green, OIII as blue), MT star reduction, histogram & curves stretch, local histogram equalization, color balance.

[Placidus]

I'm a bit confused as to which image or images you took yourself. You've posted two images. Are they both yours? Did you do the close-up yourself (in which case it's pretty spectacular for an ED80), or did you do the wide-field shot (which is also exquisite), or did someone else do one of them?

[LewisM]

M&T, I believe he overlaid his section on top of a full widefield (taken by Hubble or somesuch) to show where his section lays.

My criticism is it's over-sharpened/deconvoluted. I'd back that WAYYYYYYYY off and show it as captured, noise and all, because as-is, it's showing weird star shapes, Panda Eyes etc.

I think the traditional palette would be more enjoyable to view than the golden hues honestly.

Appreciate the LONG exposures, but pull back a bit on the aggressive processing as it is destroying data.

(who am I to criticise...)

[furgle]

I don't mind the criticism, it motivates me to do better.

Since it's raining and I have two weeks off work to recover from surgery, I'm going to play with this data some more.

The larger image was my image, plate solved and overlaid in Aladin, to show the it's place in the bigger structure.

[Andy01]

Notwithstanding the issues raised above - I really like the colour palette you have used, very pleasing to the eye :thumbsup:

[furgle]

Hopefully this version is a little better. No deconvolution, no LHE, no sharpening apart from some star reduction.

I tweaked the colors a bit, removing SII from red.

I think one of the main issue with the previous image is I tried to process without the stars and add them back in at the end. In photoshop I have methods of doing this, but my pixinsight knowledge is low. I've left the stars alone in this case. There's either some guiding error or tilt because the tiny stars don't look quite round to me.

[bigjoe]

Furgle...
Prefer the last image.

Though stars look totally different in this image...I wont criticize them ..though something not 100%.

Deconvolution is just another mathematical algorithm ..at the end of the day whos main job is to tidy blur....... seen a few overusing it, and images looking obviously artificially sharpened and overprocessed and unnatural.... a pet hate of mine.

Though with also scatter ,noise, glare, blur, differential flexure ,spacing , tracking etc to deal with
, its a reason I stick to stacking sub min for my own enjoyment, and not deal with all the headaches a lot of you long exposure guys go through.

I take my hat off to you for this and your obvious persistence.

Keep up the good work, its a pretty good image nonetheless.
bigjoe.

[Placidus]

You should alter your original post to include an image credit to Aladin Sky Atlas.