Helix with 4.5 hours of Ha and 4.5 hours of O3 (both filters 18x 900s subs). Still very noisy despite efforts to clean it up. Taken through my ED80 and pushed the HEQ5 to 15 minute subs. Not great stars generally but learnt to improve things a little. Processing still rough as guts but learning slowly. Always appreciate comments to improve things.
Looks good, Ben! A gentle application of HDRMT and/or LHE in PixInsight would probably bring out some more structure - use a clipped luminance mask and blend back some of the original image if the effect is too strong.
Going to keep imaging this until the Horsehead comes around again at a decent hour so hopefully I can double up the time on this. Did apply some HDRMT but kept it perhaps a little too subtle? The Ha certainly shows more detail without the O3 so might just use that as luminance and not combine it with the tone mapped O3?
First repro. Think I'm going to have to live with the noise for a while but enjoyed burning the reds a bit here and bringing out more detail in the centre. Update on Astrobin.
Great image Ben! Interesting how you got a hubble palette -ish colour scheme without any sulphur. What mix did you use to get that colour scheme? Or is it a trade secret
Ha, no trade secrets here! I did a straight up HOO with equal weighting which got me a greenish core and a red shell (very DSLR). I used SCNR in PixInsight (if that helps) to get rid of the green which kind of put me in the ball park as the core was changed to blue and the reds lightened a bit. I then just used Curves to subtly morph it into what I wanted (using star less tone maps). I tweaked the curves more after combining with Ha luminance. It got a little enhanced when I put it in iPhoto too (which seems to be becoming more sophisticated editing platform). In the first version I think I added 20% Ha to O3 in the green channel which got me there quicker.
