A fiery's Cat's Paw

[RickS]

Some data I had hanging around from last year. This is NGC6334 @ 2760mm focal length (Ceravolo 300 astrograph @ f/9) with an Apogee U16 camera. Approximately 8 hours of Ha, 9 hours of Oiii and a couple of hours of RGB through thick light pollution to attempt to get some star colour.

The Oiii is pretty dim so this is mostly a Ha image. It's probably a bit too colourful for some tastes. The RGB stars didn't work as well as I would have liked. Still, I think it's an interesting image :)

Higher res version at Astrobin: http://www.astrobin.com/full/178548/C/ Sorry about the lack of ICC Profile if you have a screen that doesn't approximate sRGB :(

Cheers,
Rick.

[Stevec35]

Certainly an interesting colour scheme Rick and fiery is certainly a good description. Plenty of nice detail there.

Cheers

Steve

[niharika]

wohhhh :eyepop:

[RickS]

Thanks, Steve!



Thanks, Raki, I think :)

[jase]

:cool2: Sunglasses needed :P but you also get a thumbs up for being able to maintain the detail despite the image colour vibrancy. Really electrifying palette Rick. Dare I say it, its growing on me. Though, I would have liked to have seen more of the OIII emission coming through and maybe tone it down a little. ;)

[strongmanmike]

:eyepop: love it Rick :thumbsup: bold and fiery for sure... and hey, if my recent M83 was a bit (?) overprocessed, hell, this was pushed beyond the event horizon mate :lol:

Very similar to your Veil shot, a new (Ricks) world order..? Straight onto glass or ceramics mate, a work of art :D

Mike

[DavidTrap]

Impressive, but I'll be honest - it's a bit too much for my conservative/traditional tastes!

DT

[Ross G]

A great looking photo Rick.

Nice composition and I love the strong, rich colours.

Ross.

[Rex]

Nice Rick! Smacked me in the face with that colour. Awesome stuff.

[gregbradley]

Wow, do you like some food with your chilli's??:rofl:

Its normally a dead boring object, just all red with very little interesting feature. But your colour scheme has livened it up. The yellow is showing lots of billowy detail there.

Greg.

[RickS]

Thanks, Jase! There was very little Oiii unfortunately. I have noticed that in a couple of other narrowband images. Even Don Goldman couldn't dig up much of it :) I may yet tone it down a little more but you should have seen the original :eyepop:



Thanks, your Mikeness! You gotta push the boundaries occasionally ;)

I'm expecting a couple of large Veil pics back from the framers this week.



No probs, David. I did go a little OTT and expected mixed reactions.



Thank you, Ross.



Ta, Rex!



Thanks, Greg. I was pretty happy with the detail. The chrominance mapping I did on the Ha is a nice trick but one that I could overuse if not careful. I may script it up so I can experiment easily with more subtle treatments.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Rod771]

Cat on a hot tin roof? :)

Looks like you've had fun with this one, Rick. I like it! :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Hi, Rick,

A refreshing approach. I agree with you that this one has very little OIII (or for that matter SII) making it tricky.

Best,
Mike

[RickS]

Thanks Rod & Mike!

[cometcatcher]

Very fiery shot! Just out of curiosity what makes the yellow? A mix of Ha OIII or something else?

[DrWho]

The bright and vivid colour is like shouting :eyepop: out of the screen but overall it's a very good image, Rick :thumbsup:

[RickS]

Thanks, Kevin. The yellow is from the brightest Ha emissions. Searching for a technique to make straight Ha look more interesting when I was processing the Veil nebula mosaic I experimented with using the luminance to modify hue. I do it manually in PI with a couple of slightly hairy PixelMath expressions but when I get a chance I will write a script to automate it and make it easier to experiment with the settings.



Thanks, DrWho!

[rustigsmed]

the cats paw? needs more punch! like the sabertooth tiger paw!
interesting to see how you've dealt with a Ha ultra heavy object.

Cheers

Russ

[IanP]

There is no doubt this image is very “dramatic” as far as colours are concerned, but I like it; it’s full of details and well composed :thumbsup:

[RickS]

It's sometimes called the Bear Claw by northerners which is definitely more ferocious. Thanks for the comment, Russ.



Thanks, Ian. Sometimes my experiments work and sometimes experienced imagers reel back in horror :lol:

[strongmanmike]

Not horror, amazement Rick :D

[Camelopardalis]

Stunning Rick :thumbsup: love a bit of colour.

[RickS]

Thanks, Mike. You're definitely one of the folks with a high tolerance for my hijinks :D



Thanks, Dunk!

[marco]

What a smashing image ;) Definitely not for the faint hearts but wow, definitely a different look of a popular object!
Clear skies
Marco

[RickS]

Thanks, Marco!

[Slawomir]

I was looking for inspiration how to possibly further enhance my attempt at this nebula and I think I found it - what a great image Rick!

[RickS]

Thanks, Slawomir. Best I could do without a bunch of Oiii and Sii :) I really like your Hubble version!

[Leonardo70]

Really nice Rick.

All the best,
Leo

[RickS]

Thanks, Leo!