Pillars of Creation

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Except around his stars

Hey Col, are we picken on ya stars? ..we are all just big bad star bullies ..at least there are no worms visible

I am not a fan of half of the stars either so pick on them all ya'll like! Reworking now but with my lowly 2013 MacBook Pro, some processing steps are, start and go for a shower!
I was comparing 2x2 and 3x3 drizzle to see whether having a higher FWHM (pixels) allowed for harder processing than just a 2x2 drizzle. Worms were considerably easier to control in the 2x2, possibly due to stronger SNR; not being dispersed over more pixels.

Originally Posted by codemonkey

Looking very nice indeed, Colin, great detail!

Thanks Lee

Originally Posted by Slawomir

Yes, looks great ,Colin. I like that you captured blue streamers radiating away from the 'top' of the 'main' pillar

I thought they may have been a processed artefact! Good to know I should be trying to keep them in

Originally Posted by Stevec35

Apart from the magenta stars which I find terribly distracting that's a very nice shot of the pillars Colin.

Cheers

Steve

Thanks Steve, would love to see what your 14" RC could bring up but I imagine it isn't far enough off of the beaten track for you

Originally Posted by Andy01

Love the colour palette & great detail - but can't get past those flouro disco purple Prince stars!
If you can you dial the saturation in them down say 500%, I think you have a ripper of an image in the making

Takes about 20s to turn all the stars white in Lightroom with its purple fringe remover tool Don't know what the desaturation % is but it obliterates all purple quite effectively
Last night I started working on a drizzled version, 8.5 minutes to do one pass of noise reduction on a synthetic luminance. Going to take near half an hour to do a chrominance noise removal!!

[Paul Haese]

Its a nicely detailed image so far Colin. When I did this same field last year I used the RGB stars to cover the magenta stars. It took some fiddling but I was successful in the end.

[Atmos (Colin)]

After a few days and several attempts I am leaving it here until I can get more data, NEED more SII data if nothing else. After colour calibration everything in the background is just filled with red dots, everything besides the Pillars region (quite nice SNR) is red dots

So I've gone and 2x2 drizzled and then cropped some of the central region out and made a 4096x4096 pixel region to play with. It has the FOV of a 14" F/3.8 and KAF-16803... just without the aperture or signal of such an instrument Oh and significantly lighter!

Although I don't mind the magenta/red stars, some are still a bit distracting so I do need to rework those when I've got some more data.

High Res

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

The nebula looks very nice Col

Mike

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

The nebula looks very nice Col

Mike

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Atmos

Love this hobby

[gregbradley]

Nice.job of the pillar.
Narrowband stars are a bit of an art.
RGB stars blended in with a lighten layer are hard to beat when it works!
Greg

[gregbradley]

Nice.job of the pillar.
Narrowband stars are a bit of an art.
RGB stars blended in with a lighten layer are hard to beat when it works!
Greg

[Atmos (Colin)]

I think I have a slightly better colour balance on this version and replaced everything with white stars just to make all your SHO heathens happy It is redder than the previous version, this also made it a hell of a lot noisier! Having such a scant amount of SII data.

High Res

I am thinking I might have to revisit it a bit though, I think my star mask may have been a little too starry looking at all of the dots now. Although the stars are white (except for a few large extended purple bits), there is too many of them I think.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

We agree - the nebulosity is looking very good indeed.

You are right that the only way forward with SHO is to get enough SII exposure - sometimes a whole night dedicated to just SII, but it can sometimes be very interesting and rewarding in that it tells you where highly processed material has been dredged up deep from within stars. That can be a sign of past supernova activity, showing that the star-forming region has it's Senior's Card, and has reached an advanced stage. Equally, it's not so advanced that all the gas has been consumed and converted to new stars.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by Placidus

We agree - the nebulosity is looking very good indeed.

You are right that the only way forward with SHO is to get enough SII exposure - sometimes a whole night dedicated to just SII, but it can sometimes be very interesting and rewarding in that it tells you where highly processed material has been dredged up deep from within stars. That can be a sign of past supernova activity, showing that the star-forming region has it's Senior's Card, and has reached an advanced stage. Equally, it's not so advanced that all the gas has been consumed and converted to new stars.

1.3 hours of SII with a 5" is just not enough. My SII master has noise and no contrast in even the brightest of areas