Eta Carina

[ChrisV (Chris)]

Eta Carina
On ASI071MC with GTF81
30x 6min subs.
Processed in startools. I did several versions, this is one of the more toned down versions. The others are a bit "the day the world turned dayglo".

[speach (Simon)]

nice star colors

[RickS (Rick)]

Not bad, Chris, but I wonder if there's more nebulosity you could dig out with three hours of data?

Cheers,
Rick.

[raymo]

I hope you don't mind, but I have messed about with your image
specifically to show some of the nebulosity that Rick quite rightly thinks is
there. I have ignored all other aspects of image quality, my messing about having degraded the image very considerably.
raymo

[ChrisV (Chris)]

I asked for it !
Thanks. Greatly appreciated !!!! I will have another go at processing and repost.

[billdan (Bill)]

Hi Chris, I've noticed with Startools the Wipe module (gradient removal) can eliminate nebulosity if you have it set too aggressive. Very often I have to undo Wipe and redo it because it was too aggressive. Its a bit of a balancing act.

Bill

[ChrisV (Chris)]

Thanks for the comments. I have reprocessed, a bit more heavy on the autodev and reduced the aggression with the wipe function. A lot more nebulosity now, but seems to lose detail in the core. I'll watch those startools videos again. Could also be due to me using a relatively high camera gain - a leftover from live imaging where I push everything to see stuff quickly.

A slightly better quality jpeg here on flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/142678...57684897868606

[Atmos (Colin)]

One way to go about it Chris is to process for the nebulosity and process for the core. This gives you the best of both worlds as it can be difficult to process for both at the same time

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice to see that you caught all that nebulosity, Chris. Getting the core and the faint stuff right at the same time can be difficult but it's possible

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Nice job Chris.

[OzEclipse (Joe Cali)]

Nice capture Chris.

I have used your reprocessed image in photoshop added proportional layer masks to pick up some of that lost detail from the bright core. The image posted is a jpeg but I have the photoshop file with all the layers used here : -

http://joe-cali.com/astronomy/astrophotography-2/ChrisV

Joe

[ChrisV (Chris)]

Thanks Joe. Yes it does bring out the highlights. Maybe I will have to learn Photoshop - I have only used Illustrator before, for other things. But I have access to Photoshop. Or maybe there's something equivalent in Startools.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Another program you could try is Gimp. It's much like Photoshop but free. I personally have very little experience with either but it could be worth looking at.

[billdan (Bill)]

There is a 64 bit version of Gimp available now (v2.9.5), I have downloaded it (100Mb) but I need to upgrade my PC first (still on 32bit XP) before I try it.


EDIT: This is the link I got the latest Gimp from, scroll down to the bottom of the page where the downloads are, there is a Mac version as well.
https://www.partha.com/