maaate...!

[alocky]

I've always struggled with this object to get a good colour balance, or a good dynamic range since it's so bright, and as I learn more tricks in processing and acquisition it's always an improvement on the previous effort. I guess this is why I still enjoy photographing the 'obvious targets', since they always look different!
This is about 12 hours worth of L,R,G and B with a night worth of H-alpha thrown into a super luminance channel as well.
Colour balance using PI's photometric tool on G2V stars.


Scope is a 16"f3.6 newt, with QSI683 camera.
Astrobin high res:
https://www.astrobin.com/full/349141/B/
And of course I'd appreciate any constructive criticism!
cheers,
Andrew.

[SimmoW]

Not sure whats goin on with this forum, certain folks get replies and others nil?

Nice go there Andrew, nice sharp sections in there. Some halos around the stars probably from the ha channel mixing. Maybe try using a starless Ha version. Or use Lightroom CA removal tool, thats very effective

Yes i too love the obvious targets, always something different to be seen.

[Atmos]

Some great detail Andrew! Nicely resolved but you have got the setting in the Deconvolution a bit wrong. I’d you look at the top and bottom left corners there is some swirly stuff, that is caused from having the Deringing Dark setting a bit too high.

If you get the Dark setting too long you get black rings, too high and you get that swirly stuff. Colour looks good albeit a bit saturated for my liking, others may disagree there so personal preference :)

[Prickly]

Andrew

Really great job. Keep it up you are getting some great results. That’s a top effort over 12 hours. Stars look nice and sharp. I like the way you haven’t burnt out the central detail. As you say lagoon is bright but not an easy one to process. You have lots of detail around the periphery too.

Cheers
David

[spiezzy]

bloody awesome Image love the colour and detail you have gone to a lot of effort and the out come has been well worth it well done
cheers Pete

[willik]

Nice image Andrew but the stars look a bit over done
Martin

[alocky]

Thanks for some good suggestions, I think the blue halos might be in the data as the conditions were extremely variable across the three nights but I'll take a look. The Ha only got used as part of a stack into the luminance channel, and I haven't done much with that yet.
I think you get out of this forum what you put in, and I rarely have much intelligent to say about other's photos, and certainly get more good advice than I give. So I'm grateful when people take the time to help me improve.





Hi Colin - thanks for picking that up, I saw that when I was parameterising the decon in the central region and have actually mucked up the luminance mask since there should have been no decon going on up there at all. Agree on the saturation, but I usually get more oohs when I tart it up a bit :-)

[alocky]

Thanks for the comment Martin - I don't generally use star masks in my workflow and what you've noticed is probably a combination of different seeing across the different colour channels, as well as the 8083's fairly small wells that tend to burn out the cores.

Thanks Pete, glad you liked it!

[alocky]

Andrew

Really great job. Keep it up you are getting some great results. That’s a top effort over 12 hours. Stars look nice and sharp. I like the way you haven’t burnt out the central detail. As you say lagoon is bright but not an easy one to process. You have lots of detail around the periphery too.

Cheers
David



Thanks for the encouragement David, I appreciate it! For some reason the forum won't let me quote your messages though?
cheers,
Andrew.

[RickS]

Hi Andrew,

The original version on Astrobin looks great. As a couple of people noted, the "B" revision has some odd artefacts visible at higher res.

Nothing wrong with revisiting the popular targets especially if you can get a better result than last time!

Cheers,
Rick.

[alocky]

Thanks Rick - the original was without any real attempt at decon or sharpening! I've put a version 'C' up now.

[strongmanmike]

Perhaps a little over sharpened in places and always difficult to blend HaLRGB without flattening the variations in brightness across the scene a bit (I've done it a few times :P :sadeyes:)... but overall the image still packs some bright punch :eyepop:...some nice colours there for sure Andrew :thumbsup:

Mike

[topheart]

Nice one Andrew!!

Cheers,
Tim

[Andy01]

Whoa, that's punchy - Very vivid! :D

I'd echo Colin's comments about the stars - if you can clean them up it will look even better! :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

I like the colours and the stars look great too. pinpoint.