Tarantula Nebula - And Question about Colour Methods

[dylan_odonnell]

Hi guys and gals,

I'm enjoying this good weather for a change!

Here is a tarantula I caught in the backyard this weekend. (Heavily compressed for forums small filesize allowance)

The first stack was quite green with lightpollution and I got lucky after tweaking the sliders to get it's nice 'natural' colours back. By natural I mean blues for the reflection regions and reds for the emission regions.

Is this how others work to get a 'natural' colour or is there a better way to return the image to a more scientific baseline? Like maybe checking the black regions are a neutral grey?

I use the background colour offset in Nebulosity, then apply tweaks in Photoshop (levels / curves / hue saturation).

d

[raymo]

Pretty good, but you didn't get the green from light pollution; that's the colour that a standard DSLR renders the Tarantula.
raymo

[5ash]

Nice image .what setup did you use?
Regards philip:thumbsup:

[dylan_odonnell]

You're right.. I do have green light pollution though (I use a green laser to knock out the street light!) so all the stars were green before colour correction. That's going to kill the tarantulas green I guess unless I mask the correction which is possible .. thanks!

d

[dylan_odonnell]

Oops thanks yes of course, here are the details :

28 x 180s exposures @ F2 (Hyperstar3)
Celestron 9.25″ Edge HD + UHC Filter
QHY12 OSC CCD @ -15C
Stacked in Nebulosity 4 / Tweaks in PS
(Total integration time 84 minutes)

[cometcatcher]

Looks good! What was the camera?

[rustigsmed]

hi Dylan,

nice one,
if the camera isn't astro modified it is actually surprisingly hard to get much colour out of the tarantula.
when you use levels and curves you can go to the drop down box and select each colour individually rather than doing the rgb together, this will help with the balance.

cheers

[dylan_odonnell]

Thanks! It's the QHY12 OSC CCD, running at -15C

[dylan_odonnell]

Thanks Russell, I've just started doing this.. it makes a big difference!

d

[rustigsmed]

Look forward to seeing the results :thumbsup:

[Rex]

Nice shot Dylan. Very smooth.

[pluto]

Very nice Dylan!
I'm glad to see that Hyperstar setup is working well :)

[dylan_odonnell]

Thanks Hugh! I am loving my setup to bits.. I've become a hyperstar (and CCD) evangelist and won't stop banging on about it to anyone who will listen :) I gave a little presentation at the club a couple of weeks ago about the lens. It's really something else.

And thanks Rex!