Pillars of Creation Alphabet

[Atmos]

I’ve long long been trying to nicely combine Ha, OIII from my 130mm F/5 refractor and the OSC data from my Mewlon 250. I feel I’ve finally managed to get there :)

Ha - 13x400s
OIII - 13x400s
OSC - 54-120s
4.7 hours from the backyard

High resolution ( https://www.astrobin.com/full/wmbua7/0/) for those pixel peepers :thumbsup:

Also managed to figure out a way of using PixelMath for moving back and forth between linear and non-linear without having any effect on the underlying data. Mostly wanted to use StarNet for removing the stars and it doesn’t work on linear data so being able to go non-linear, star removal, linear and then deconvolution helps.

Finding within this region that adding Ha adds a bit of detail but the OIII helps dramatically with the OIII popping from the strong Ha emission.

[Joshua Bunn]

Beautiful Colin, pleasing to the eye, and great resolution.

[strongmanmike]

Well...looks mighty fine on my phone Col ;) great colour too and your stella combining looks the best Ive seen you do :thumbsup: Looking forward to having a closer look at a bigger version on a proper screen :thumbsup:

Mike

[codemonkey]

A lovely natural looking M16, Colin, well done!

I'm planning on trying to do a more natural palette with my M16 data too, but I've never been very successful with that. One thing I did notice was that using the Elliptical Galaxy reference in PCC really made the O3 pop on my RGB data.

[marc4darkskies]

Agree with all of the above! Very nicely done Colin! :thumbsup:

It's also very nice to see someone else doing some "natural" palette work and making a good job of it! Using Ha and OIII to augment the RGB colours is the way to go for an object like this.

My only minor critique (and I mean minor) is that your bright star profiles look a little "blocky" (harder edges) - as opposed to a more Gaussian shape (softer edges). Doesn't detract from the image though - I just notice these things. :shrug:

[Nikolas]

Very nice Colin

[Atmos]

Thanks Joshua, using your adapters :thumbsup:



Thanks Mike, I’ve given PixelMath a lot of thought before combining this one and pretty happy with how it’s turned out. Gives me hope for future Ha OIII RGB combinations :thumbsup:



I’m looking forward to seeing your eventual rendition :) Can be interesting to see how a different combination method turns out :)
I’ve never been really impressed with PCC myself but I’d interested in what you can do with your excellent data.



Thanks Marc :) I also really like seeing some of these narrowband regions in closer to accurate colour.

I hadn’t noticed that so good pick up :thumbsup: I’m pretty sure that’s from using the Ha and OIII to reduce the star size a little to help make the nebulosity pop a little more. Dimmer stars remain round but the brighter ones with their 6 diffraction spikes go blocker. Reasonably easy fix but as you say, it’s quite minor :)



Thanks Nik :)

[strongmanmike]

Yep, still looks good on a good monitor Col, nice work :thumbsup: and I agree with Marcus, good to see a natural colour version of this object, that manages to utilise the higher res/contrast that NB filters provide.

Mike

[Peter Ward]

Humm... First impressions were noise and not great seeing which gave some bloated stars (which I'll add are superbly round)

A solid rendition just the same :thumbsup:

[Andy01]

No issue with the natural colours, looks good :thumbsup:
I thought it would be sharper though? :question:

[topheart]

Nice one Colin!
Cheers,
Tim

[Slawomir]

Very pleasing pillars, particularly with such modest integration :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

I'm liking moving away from SHO a bit, RGB is good fun :thumbs:
I'm thinking that some of this is to do with OSC from bortle 7 skies with F/10, doesn't get the same SNR as mono or a faster instrument.

The Ha has a native stack around 1.8 pixels but that equates to 2.35" after drizzle and resizing down to the 0.4"/pixel from the Mewlon. The RGB stack has a FWHM around 1.9" but as I was hoping for a little more resolution. I'm thinking some of it is a lack of contrast from the rest of the environment.





Thanks Tim and Suavi :)

[Placidus]

Very sharp image Colin.

Trish and I seem to be in the minority in much preferring the HSO palette, but this is a fine rendition.

I think you're saying you remove the stars, deconvolve the starless image, and then put the stars back. Two questions:

(1) Why not deconvolve with the stars in? Is it to avoid panda-eyes around the stars? We certainly do wavelet sharpening on the starless image, for that very reason, but with deconvolution we use an anti-panda algorithm.

(2) What do you use for a point spread function if you are deconvolving the starless image? Do you load the PSF from the with-stars version, or do you use a synthetic PSF?

Best,
Mike

[Atmos]

I have in the past done a SHO of this region and I do love the contrast that narrowband provides but I do also like the star clusters that only show nicely in RGB.

1) It's definitely to avoid panda eyes :) I've found that what goes into protecting panda eyes is what causes the deconvolution worms so if you don't do ANY protection you don't get worms. I routinely use 50 passes of deconvolution and don't ever have to worry about worms because I'm not protecting any part of the image.

2) I model the PSF before I do star removal. Modelling the PSF is usually one of the first processes I do anyway so it's a non issue :)