The Lagoon in Ha

[gregbradley]

This is the first panel in a planned 2 panel mosaic. Now I am thinking it should be a 4 panel mosaic as the Lagoon and NGC6559 cover a wide area.

AP RHA 305 F3.8 PMX Proline 16803 x 10 minutes 5nm Ha.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/160395823/large regular size

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/160395823/original large size

Greg.

[DavidTrap]

Fantastic contrast Greg - how many images? (I'll be depressed if it's just one...)

DT

[gregbradley]

Thanks David.

21 x 10 minutes at 1x1 -35C.

Greg.

[DavidTrap]

Thank goodness - a solid data set!

DT

[Slawomir]

Looking very good Greg! You must be happy with those nice stars right to the edges.

[strongmanmike]

:lol: well ya certainly pushed the sheet out out o that data Greg but again, showing distinct Honderness :)

Mike

[gregbradley]

LOL, yes the scope does make an image pretty fast.



Thanks Slawomir. Yes I am happy about that. It looked like it was going to be quite a battle at one point.



Thanks Mike. Sheet extraction is what I do best.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Little flat, but huge field. :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

How do you mean flat - a bit HDR?

Greg.

[multiweb]

Yeah mate, bit too HDR'ed. Love the field and the details but the dynamic range is a little "levelled". Just personal taste. I realise you try to show everything. Bright core and faint toes. :)

[IanP]

Don’t worry Greg, Marc misspellt :P the world flat with Wunderbar !!!

[rustigsmed]

thats a lovely lagoon Greg!
looking forward to seeing how the panel progresses.

Cheers

RUss

[gregbradley]

Thanks for that Marc. I agree. I want to make sure its spot on because if I invest the time in a large mosaic its a big time investment.

I just did a repro and got a softer higher dynamic range look. I guess I took too much out trying to show the core area. Shadows/highlights tool is not always your friend.

By the way how did you get those lovely ripples in your core area? I liked that. I am showing lots of fine details but those lovely ripples seem elusive. Secret French herbs and spices?

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Ah yes, much better :thumbsup:

Mike

[gregbradley]

Thanks Ian. I updated the image with a repro so not sure which you saw. I just did it in the last 15 minutes. I am trying to get this one right as its going to be a mosaic.

I think I'll have to reshoot the area as I haven't got the very top of the neb. So it'll be a panel jobbie. Lagoon is tricky because of the high dynamic range plus it can look like a undetailed fluffy white cloud easily. So to keep the dynamic range yet show the ripples and ridges is a processing goal. Also that little tendril area to the left of the Lagoon I noticed in Paul's Ha Lagoon I wanted to keep in sight.

Cheers Russell. This scope is totally awesome and I am bit by bit learning how to use it to full effect. Not quite fully there yet but I am now getting into that familiarity with a scope you need to extract top performance from it.

Its easy to use in that it does not require collimation. It does not have star diffraction spikes so images look quite APO and the stars are very precise and Roland seems to have gotten a lot of the light energy into the core and not in the outer rings which give some scopes fluffy stars. In particular apart from whacking down the photons fast I see the stars are better shown in this scope than other scopes I have used. They can be made to come up nicely without overwhelming the scene which a lot of previous scopes I have used tend to do. Star sizes are small. Possibly the best apart from the AP140 I sold to Rick. Now that had small stars.
But 12 inches F3.8 and this level of precision and performance - hat's off to Roland he's pulled off another telescope miracle with his engineering excellence. The scope does not shift focus much at all with temperature, it cools fast, its solid as a tank. The thermal blankets are a smart idea (you could put them on any scope). The removable rear plates to help air the mirror ala Tak Mewlon is a good idea as well. The 2 fans are another plus. All 6 optical aberrations being corrected gives a view much like an FSQ only faster and more aperture. An FSQ does give some lovely tight stars and wide views though. The Honders though gives better colour with no colour bias and perfectly colour corrected - no chromatic aberration I can see. I wonder about cleaning though as the back is open with a fairly large gap all the way around the primary so dust potentially could get in. I'll have to be very mindful of that whilst still utilising the scope. Perhaps I leave those removable plates on when its windy.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Yeah that looks heaps better. :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

So Marc, what about your secret French herbs and spices to get the ripples in the core?:)

Greg

[multiweb]

Pinch of cinnamon, some turmeric and salt and pepper.;)
I just did some standard deconv in Startools. You need a bit of image scale to show the details in the core. You're already too wide IMHO.

There is also a cool PS plugin by TOPAZ Lab that can accentuate the ridges. I used it in the past on widefields. You do one run for the dark stuff and another run for the bright stuff. Then you overlay one as lighter color and the other one as darker color. Makes everything pop like a contrast booster but it's more targeted to the shock fronts.

[Andy01]

Thats going to be a mighty fine Mosaic when finished - dunno what what you had to sacrifice to get the 'scope but it sure was worth it :)

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marc. I have Topaz 5. Is it light detail?



Thanks Andy. Yes I figured it would be worth the investment. Plus top scopes don't tend to depreciate much over time so its the initial cost of entry really. I already had some top gear to sell so that helped a lot.

Plus I wanted to simplify to 2 setups only. I had 4 top scopes and so many adapters it wasn't funny. I would forget what went with what after a while.

I decided it was better to have a smaller number of totally top end gear than lots of good gear. A bit dispersing when you have too many choices.

Greg.

[multiweb]

I have Topaz Details 2. I usually do a very light pass of micro contrast enhancement, creative details Accent and Feature Enhancement. Depends on the pic. Try different settings until you're happy with one.
If you have enough image scale, deconv will usually bring it out anyway. Startools has some cool fractal algo to enhance shock fronts and you can always use the HighPass filter technique in PS with a 5.2px setting and apply as a layer with a 60% "softlight" overlay blend.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Marc. I'll have to check which version of Topaz I
have.
Theres also some tools from a company called One
I havent tried them yet.

[DavidTrap]

Well, I'm going to disagree about your reprocess Greg - I think you've gone far too soft!

Looking again at your first attempt (which I believe is still your thumbnail attached to this thread), I now think it's overdone. I had thought my image could use some more contrast, especially on the ridges in the nebulosity, but after seeing your repro, I'm more satisfied with mine.

Maybe somewhere in between??? I really think you need to pony-up and try Pixinsight - HDRMultiscaleTransform does a fantastic job of compressing the dynamic range. Works wonders on giving a 3d feel to these "flat" areas on nebulosity ;)

DT

[gregbradley]

Thanks David. I have PixInsight and use parts of it occasionally. I'll give that HDR tool a go.

Greg.

[RickS]

Looks good, Greg, and I'm keen to see the finished mosaic! Would be interesting to compare the current and previous versions.

Cheers,
Rick.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Rick. Yes I'll do a comparison as I've imaged this area few times before:lol:

Greg.

[Ross G]

Great mono photo Greg.

Detailed and so sharp.

Ross.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Ross. I posted the colour version of this today. I am very happy with it.

This AP RHA scope rocks.

Greg.

[Paul Haese]

I thought the first version of this was a little too processed and this version is just a tad too soft. I think some where in between the two would be great. I also thought the first version had better contrast than the first.

[gregbradley]

I think I am simply going to reshoot this area as the original intention was to do a 2 panel mosaic and I was attempting to get both Lagoon and NGC2559 in the one shot. I have to crop a bit as I lost a small amount to rotation in subs over several days and its was slightly cropped at the top as well.

So its going to be faster to simply do 2 panels and start again otherwise its a 4 panel job and hard to process.

Greg.