Centaurus A

[pluto]

Just got home from a long weekend under dark skies. However the weather only let me get enough data for this one image, and even then not enough as this is still pretty noisy. This is just a quick process, I'm not really happy with the stars, couldn't get PI to do a nice masked stretch on the L. I want to grab some Ha for it then I'll have another go.

L = 8 x 10 minute
R = 10 x 5 minute bin2x2
G = 10 x 5 minute bin2x2
B = 6 x 5 minute bin2x2

Takahashi TSA120 | EQ6 | SBIG STT8300 + FW8G + AO-8T
CCDSoft + PixInsight + Photoshop CC + Lightroom

Big version here:
https://hughsblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/ngc5128-centaurus-a/

Critiques appreciated :)

[astroboof]

It's lovely. There is nothing wrong with it. Don't worry about it, and enjoy.

[dylan_odonnell]

Looks pretty bloody amazing to me Hugh :)

[astronobob]

Definitely has potential for adding signal for the left-over noise, but Wow, hows the detail in the dark dust lane, Thats quite a Ripper piece of work so far Hugh :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[pluto]

Thanks Steve :)

Cheers Dylan!


Thanks Bob :)

[jase]

Nicely done Hugh. :thumbsup: Great details as others have also noted. You've picked up the faint jet at the 7 oclock position. I wonder if there is a little more colour hiding within the data to give the image punch.

[Paul Haese]

I like the detail level, but think the colour is a little too subdued.

[RickS]

Looks good, Hugh. Beef up the colour as Jase and Paul suggested and it will be a winner.

I've pretty much given up on Masked Stretch apart from an occasional mild stretch followed by a HT stretch. Otherwise I find it results in artifacts like posterised star cores.

Cheers,
Rick.

[pluto]

Thanks for the comments and advice Rick, Paul, and Jase. I was going to bump up the saturation but I wasn't sure if it would be too much. Now having looked at it a few times on different screens I totally agree with you guys and I'll definitely have a look at the saturation.

Cheers :)

[jase]

Looking forward to seeing the repro Hugh. I'd be tempted to work the image over with PS vibrance in combination with saturation as opposed to a saturation boost alone. Vibrance has the ability to reduce the data being clipped as a result of bringing in too much colour. RGB being an additive colour space, there is only so much saturation you can add until things turn ugly.

With muted colours, you may also want to try a heavily DDP stretch RGB master and give it a good saturation boost. Don't boost too hard where you start to see artefacts. Import it into PS and use the soft light blend. Soft light darkens so you'll need to scale back the opacity to avoid clipping the shadows. This approach can work well to counteract the aforementioned challenging of getting more colour into an additive colour space.

[Ross G]

Great looking photo Hugh.

Great detail and so sharp.

Ross.

[Rex]

Beautiful image Hugh, the depth and detail in the dust lane is incredible.

[pluto]

Thanks for the tip.
Hopefully I can grab some Ha this week, I'm looking forward to this repro :)


Thanks Ross!


Cheers Rex :)

[Rod771]

Looks good Hugh!

I tend not to use Masked stretch anymore. I was using it to create "soft" stars in a clone image, then adding those stars to the main image through a mask using Pixel Math. I thought it was a good approach at first but after processing further targets, I found it resulted in an overall loss of detail across the image. Now I just shoot shorter subs for the star data then add them to the main image with the HDR Comp tool.