Alnitak - Magical Mystery Tour

[PKay]

One of the most beautiful stars in the sky.
And hard to get right. One day...

This image is an extract from a large mosaic.

About 4.5 hrs of 60s subs, unity gain.

Apparently, the Beatles smoked a joint (or two) and wrote a few songs.

Try astro processing :-)

[Robert_T]

And it is a psychedelic piece of sky! So much going on here i don't think I've seen this framing before and really changes the typical horsehead image. My next serious target i think. Great stuff Peter, can we see the whole mosaic?

[PKay]

Hi Robert

The entire image is here: https://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=265700&d=1600828721

To some the extract might appear as an over processed cartoon.
However I have been experimenting to solve issues we all face.

1: How to deal with a bright object next to a feint one.

I used tiles so that each area could be exposed differently.
ie: the Star is a different tile to the Nebula.

2: How to acheive and retain colour.
I am developing a technique using incremental stretching (lets say 5 steps).
At each step I save off a copy and can then use it to get colour samples.
The samples are then used in the final result.

A lot of stuffing around, and the extract is a result of the above techniques.

Anyway, last night was so clear guiding accuracy was down to fractions of an arc secound, and I had the lowest HFR ever!