Ngc 253

[Atmos]

Getting in on this to be the first of the season!!
Taken 5 months ago, I finally ended up with a version I am reasonably happy with. Seeing was not crash hot, ~3.5" so I've hit it pretty hard with decon to try to get some of that detail back. I feel like the galaxy needs a little more saturation but when I do I feel like it needs less. Hard to decide.

High Res (http://www.astrobin.com/full/287438/0/)

[RickS]

Something a bit odd with the colour halos around the big stars but it's a very nice NGC253, Colin :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

Didn't notice that before, probably just poor masking on the big bright stars. I used the star mask that increased for the luminance channel, should have probably created a new one for the RGB but I was lazy ;)

[Placidus]

Very nice colour balance (though black point could be made a tiny bit higher without information loss) and lovely contrast.

Squillions of little faint fellows in the background.

Taken with the 130 mm refractor?

[SimmoW]

That's great Colin, I reckon the sat is very close to right. Would be good to see a comparison shot with the new cam. Lovely details in the red bits.

Awaiting Mike's verdict on the decon :D

[Atmos]

I had a feeling I may have darkened the background a little much, tried playing with the curves but couldn't get it any good. My very last processing step was crippling some of the bottom end of the histogram, pretty sure nothing of any importance was actually clipped through :) Basically just green background noise.

It was taken with my 130mm and the QHY22 (ICX-694) I had.



Going to be a while before there is a comparison, gotta wait for it to be in a decent position :P

[strongmanmike]

:lol:

A great shot of NGC 253 Col and if you have used decon here then you have used it well, no tell tail signs, well done ;) good resolution too and the faint outer halo is even visible :thumbsup: Maybe just missing a bit of blue..?

Mike

[Camelopardalis]

Looks a beauty Colin :thumbsup: very nicely detailed.

[alpal]

Hi Colin,
you've done well there.
I reckon it does need a bit more saturation with LAB mode & a boost for blue &
a few other changes like an increase in contrast on the galaxy alone.
I hope you don't mind? - I had a quick go.
I know what you mean - I've sort of overdone the saturation slightly.
Do you think this looks better?

cheers
Allan

[Atmos]

That looks a lot better Alan, definitely needs the colour tweaked. At least the data is there :P



Just had a look at one I took with my QHY9 the previous year, definitely needs more blue.
The halo actually showed up really well in the Lum, had to do quite a bit of RGB smoothing so that the halo didn't look like hundreds and thousands.



Thanks Dunk :)

[alpal]

Hi Colin,
Yes - the data is very good & it's there waiting for a possible reprocess at any time.
Every time I post a picture here I end up posting a revision.
There are so many variables.
You could even try stacking with 2x or 3x drizzle to see if you could get any more resolution out of it?
I think the colours look better now too.
Remember I only did a quick job & used a blurred layer mask on just the galaxy.

cheers
Allan

[traveller]

Great image Colin, and Al did a great job too.

[gregbradley]

A very pleasing image of NGC253. Opinions can sometimes differ about the correct colour for this galaxy. I go with the outer ring are being quite blue and yellows and browns for the core like almost every other galaxy.

So that would mean you are lacking some blue in the outer spiral arms.

Greg.

[Atmos]

You've shown me that I do need a reprocess from scratch, got the colour peaks right in the histogram to begin with but still not quite right :P
Not sure if I can get more resolution out of it as the seeing was pretty bad and I'm already looking at a high FWHM.

All I did was a star mask and played with the blue channel.


Alan did show its potential :)



I had a look back at my first attempt at it with my previous setup (first galaxy shot) and it was a lot more blue. Got that wrong somewhere along the way.

http://www.astrobin.com/full/287438/B/

Still begging for a complete reprocess which I'll get around to at some point :)

[DJT]

Nice Image Colin.

Definitely needed a bit of blue but keep an eye on the background when tweaking. A range Mask and desaturation should help calm it down.

[Paul Haese]

Hi Colin,

the detail is very sharp to me. I don't mind the colour of the later two images. I think the first one was a bit bland to me.

[JA]

Great Job Colin:thumbsup:

I really like the tiny crisp stars all the way to the edges and detail in the spiral !

Best
JA