I started another thread cause folk who have looked at the other thread will not look again just because they see I posted something and would think that I am just rattling on and because I am rather happy with this one given all my problems in getting more data I thought I would start fresh.
Gear etc..115 mmTS triplet,unguided HEQ5,ZWO mono cooled, one minute subs,Deep Sky Stacker,Star Tools,Photo Shop and Gimp.
It was to be a new start with auto guide and reasonable gain, but not only did the guiding not work after sorting it out at 1 am the previous night the mount stopped tracking altogether, too some time to get things working..I had rotated the camera to get better framing. Even though I got the mpunt working it was playing up tracking ok the not for no reason I could find...so half the subs were rubbish..when it seemed to be working finally I had to go inside to warm up onlt to return one hour later to work out there was cloud for 45 minutes..give up..me never..took a few more and after 12 sorted the auto guide and got round stars in a ten minute test..anyways although the two night data was at 90 degrees to each other I stacked them knowing I would need a huge crop..about 40 % as it turned out...however the results in Startools was encouraging. I was using autodevelop and deconvolution and just using the time to gain experience.
But what I did was to make two sets of finals,one normal and one rather light..very light,,ran each (ha,S11and O11 with an artificial luminance from stacking 30% of the everything..the best of course) and a special very darkened core...took all into photo shop and merged the core into the normal ones and merged the normal ones with the crazy light ones ended up with many other images and just kept adding and closing what I had finished with until only one remained which I adjusted and further adjusted in Gimp...so here it is...the stars lack colour but they are smaller than I am used to and I am happy with the detail even the colour but most of all that after such a bad bad night I pushed on and produced what I think is a silk purse out of a pigs ear...
A most extraordinary image of the Lagoon. Gave up trying to follow your processing on this but what you ended up with is very unique. Love the colours you've achieved and it's probably something you could never replicate again but this certainly stands out as one of the most impressive you've posted Alex. I've got to hand it to you for persevering, in doing so you've broken all the rules but the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Great image. Well done.
The image seems to lost a fair bit in the downsize but it seems to have landed ok.
Needless to say it looks different on my screen before downsize for upload.
Since I have been using the RGB tool in StarTools I let it generate the colour and find that not playing with the colour balance is the best way to go. When I had to colour in black and white images in Photoshop prior to layering them it was a bigger problem cause of my colour blindness I could be colouring stuff purple when it was supposed to be blue...
The HA subs were really great and very detailed however I could not get enough O11 and S11 so hopefully I can improve this somewhat with more data in those channels.
And I did not have any luminance at all so as I said I combined ha, O11 and S11 in a stack and fed it into the RBG tool as Luminance.
One reason I was happy is because the deconvolution worked for some reason and I don't know why really but in the past I was never happy with my images after deconvolution so I would cancel the process and go on without it.
What I mean by two final images ( actually it was three) is after I saved the result from RBG I took the image back into manual develop and made that image brighter such that the core was gone but the outter nebulosity became brighter, and saved that brighter image..I then darkened all the final images ha, o11 and s11 and L so only the region around the core was showing and ran them in the RGB tool and saved the result to use to enhance the core in the rgb other finals.
I took those three images into photo shop and using the rubber tool eased the core into the other images and combined all three using the layers in photo shop, then layered those images and used the rubber tool to add the outter nebulosity... did a little emphasis on the image with the burn and dodge tools to enhance detail and tried to create an effect where the eye is Sortta led down a tunnel to the brightest part of the image, using the bright band on the clouds at the bottom to catch the eye...my problem was because of the cropping I had to somehow balance the image even with the center of attention being way off the center of the image...it would have been so much better if I was not forced to crop because of the extreme stacking artifacts.
All I do in gimp is a nudge of the levels, and a nudge of brightness and contrast and to back off saturation as well as downsizing the image there.
Anyways things will get better, particularly star colour, when I can auto guide and go for lower gain, and disiplin myself to take dark frames and flat frames and maybe have the correct balance of channel data.
Thanks again for the encouragement I have a few boxes to tick but I will get there.
Alex
Alex . Top effort mate I love the colours especially around the core. Finally got my zwo 1600 yesterday so you should see funky colour images posted from myself soon
Wow Alex that is certainly very different and as said very unique, well done mate, you just don't give up do you, nice work.
I too couldn't follow your processing technique.
Alex . Top effort mate I love the colours especially around the core. Finally got my zwo 1600 yesterday so you should see funky colour images posted from myself soon
Well if nothing else try some short exposures at high gain in HA and blow yourself away what only you get in a minute...just for fun before you get serious.
Alex
Wow Alex that is certainly very different and as said very unique, well done mate, you just don't give up do you, nice work.
I too couldn't follow your processing technique.
Leon
Actually not giving up is my biggest problem in many ways...there has been lots of things in my life I should have given up on as they were not working for me and I wasted lots of time before I finally gave up..so I guess I do give up easily but I do give up after trying my best and failing repeatedly to achieve contentment ..I am going to see the glasses guy and see if they can make me some glasses to help with colour blindness. You can buy colour blind glasses I found out but I need glasses that I can see detail as well..reading, driving and gazing at my splendor in the mirror.
Anyways I am not worried I never would have though when I was eleven years old that I could get this far. One needs to remember where you started.
I hope you and Alice are safe and well.
Alex
Alex
Another superb image with incredible detail, colours and contrast
I don’t know how you get such round tight stars unguided
One for the gallery !!
Martin
Thanks everyone. And I must thank Startools.
All the subs were just so noisy my only reaction was to throw them away.
Where things improved was following Martin's comment about autodevelop and having the software developer himself point me in the right direction re LRGB...as I practice I will bring my images to a more subtle style I expect but I am so happy to now be able to bring out more detail than before.
Thanks everyone I am glad you like it in spite of only half of it making it ...but to see the image in StarTools shed it's noise like a tired skin is just so neat...every other noise reduction just seems to destroy detail but not with StarTools as far as I use it and I use it hard ..just think of the noise in stuff where gain settings are 2x 3x recommended settings...
Alex
you just don't give up do you, nice work.
