Pelican Nebula

[SimmoW]

All the details are in Astrobin:

http://www.astrobin.com/208790/

An amazing region and a bloody good remote observatory!! Rick and I are both members.

Processing in PI and the surprisingly capable Lightroom.

[Somnium]

wow, looks amazing

[strongmanmike]

Wow lovely colours Simon and some great detail coming through, looks to be some fairly strong jpeg compression though which isn't doing the image any favours, can you re-post a less compressed version to Astrobin? Even with this it is clear you have a fine image there, so I would love to see it without that :thumbsup:

Mike

[Placidus]

Masterful. Totally pinpoint stars.

Did you use SII=red, OIII=blue, Halpha = green?

[RickS]

Very nice work, Simmo! What processing did you do in Lightroom?

I have been too busy playing with telescopes in the back yard this week to do any processing yet. I'm hoping to have the AP140 ready for first light at a dark site this weekend. I got all my V curves done last night. Just need another clear night to measure the filter offsets.

Cheers,
Rick.

[SimmoW]

Thanks chaps. Mike I'll have to redo whatever I did in Lightroom then export the FULL size JPEG, rather than 80%. Rick I find LRs various highlight and shadow adjustment tools very easy to adjust. Things like colour range sat and hue adjust, highlights and shadows tweaks, extremely effective noise reduction, vibrancy, even the new haze function (though care is needed not to go overboard!)

[Paul Haese]

Cool colours Simon with heaps of detail. Something not available to most southerners. That dust and gas projection is an interesting feature.

[RickS]

Fair enough. We can compare and contrast when I finally get around to processing it. I'm happy to do all that stuff in PI now.

[multiweb]

Pinpoint stars and great details. Very cool shot. :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Still interested. The reason I asked was because you've captured quite a lot of red stuff, and I'm wondering if it's SII. SII is usually in short supply and hard to image well. If so, well done.

[SimmoW]

Thanks again, nah Mike, the RGB allocations used were Ha, SII and OIII.

Micro-Mike, here's your big version for ya, thanks for spotting the artefacts, I did use my usual compression but with such a pure image, even minor compression sticks out like the proverbials. Much better now

http://www.astrobin.com/208790/B/

[strongmanmike]

:lol:...(Flabby Mike now :ashamed:)




See?...told ya ;)

Aaaand, as I suspected, behind that crackly crunchy exterior I could see this F-ing excellent image mate :D bloody great work :thumbsup: (sorry for the expletives - just some healthy passion :))

Mike

[Andy01]

Top shelf stuff Simmo, very nice to see such lovely data processed so well.
That being said, not sure how I feel about remote obs... Maybe it's just me but I like being under actual stars, and enjoy the process of imaging manually. (maybe not the actual setting up & all that though!).
Can't fault your results though, well done :)

[SimmoW]

Agree Andy, you can't beat the satisfaction of doing all the setup yourself. Imaging MANUALLY? you do that? No filter or exposure scripts? No autoguiding?

But for us true astro addicts who want to push the limits, and produce images that would normally be impossible from our existing setups, such arrangements are compelling.