Tarantula Nebula HaOIIIRGB

[Atmos]

My processing probably leaves a lot to be desired here, just learning to blend narrowband and RGB, trying to create synthetic luminance, so much more to learn!

Processing in this version has been fairly minimal, I had a little bit of tilt in my Ha frames so that has taken away from the rounder stars. At any rate, criticism very much welcome :)

Telescope: 130mm Sky Rover Triplet F/5.7
Mount: Belt Drive EQ6
Camera: QHY9

36x400 RGB
23x900 Ha (Full moon)
4x900 OIII (Full moon)

Larger Astrobin Version (http://www.astrobin.com/full/224233/0/)

[Rod771]

Nice field,Colin! You've certainly illustrated just how bright the Tarantula is.:thumbsup:

[alpal]

Nice work Colin,
I think it could do with a colour boost in LAB mode &
a change to the stretching as per attached.
What do you think?

cheers
Allan

[Atmos]

It really is a big and bright object, sometime good to attack over a full moon :)



There is definitely a lot more in there than I'd stretched out, that's for sure!

[alpal]

Hi Colin,
have another go - it's great data.
I could post a large version on Astrobin - non public mode -but it's your photo
so I won't unless you want me to?

cheers
Allan

[Atmos]

I kinda destroyed my synthetic luminance when doing this, just using Ha as a lum makes all the dimmer stars disappear so I used PixelMath to combine the RGB data in to get the stars, this removed a good portion of the fainter nebulosity in the process though. I'll have to have another crack at it tomorrow, try to create a good star mask to protect the RGB data when applying the Ha Luminance.

[alpal]

Try 50 % Ha & 50% synthetic luminance in Photoshop layers.

[Atmos]

Had a bit of fun trying some difference ways of processing, lost count on the number of times I started back from scratch again haha To try something different I even ended up blending a version from PI with one that I ran a Low Pass FFT on in MaxIM DL, seemed to help a bit.

I have not done any HDR on this version, I tried but for some reason there were some regions where the blue stars behind the nebula would poke through and create some really funky results. Without the HDR it does give it more of a 3D feel, not quite as flat, the nebula actually appears to be in front of the background stars.

No doubt end up having another go at this at some point.

Full Res (http://www.astrobin.com/full/224233/C/)

[Bassnut]

Excellent detail Colin. Your second processing try is much worse than the 1st, and the colour is still terrible. listen to uncle Allen, his try is much better.

[rustigsmed]

hi colin,

i like how you have brought out the faint stuff on this one and i think i know the look you are after, - keeping it bright to maintain the 3d'ness.

seeing al had a crack (and because i haven't had any data for ages) i thought i'd have a go too (hope you don't mind). in photoshop, i've aimed for somewhere between Al's HDR version and yours.
- moved the green and blue black point closer to the curve
- moved the highlight slider to reduce the core brightness.
- mode->lab, slight colour boost
- mode -> rgb move black point in green and blue again (red is slightly clipped i always do that in lab mode for some reason).

Cheers

Russ