M16 in "Natural" Narrowband

[Andy01]

Imagine imaging DSO's with a One Shot colour camera but with the added detail of Narrowband.

Here we have my interpretation of the classic M16 a "natural" palette, with the Sii on a 'ultrared', Ha in red and Oiii in green and blue channels with RGB star colours.

I used a few masks to bring as much LUM detail from the HA & S2 to the pillars themselves, turned out ok considering my location! :)

Approx 11 hrs of data from with processing inspired by Jose Carballada.
Taken from my light polluted suburban backyard, Bortle 7 - Lockdown #6 (yes 6!) Melbourne, Australia.

ASTROBIN VERSION (https://www.astrobin.com/full/whbhcx/0/)

PS: Took a while to get the data for this one as Kstars/Ekos/Stellarmate & I have been mutually respective adversaries for a year now, since Lockdown#1.

Despite various crashes & bugs, overall it's been pretty awesome using automation & most of the issues were caused by user error ie: mine!

After the latest upgrade to SM 1:5:9, I couldn't get plate solving to work. Many wasted nights later I reached out to Jasem (the software developer) in Kuwait.

He solved them personally by team viewer last week!
Seems I was missing two critical index files that I hadn't downloaded, which for reasons of size, weren't included in the system upgrade.

Jasem patiently worked it though & tested it all with me for 2-3 hours, at no charge. All fixed now, I'm a happy guy again - how's that for service? 😇

I've since purchased a second card to loaded up with all these correct settings as a backup! 😀

[strongmanmike]

Yeah, pretty consistent with yer style Andy :). It's a reasonably well imaged object and your interpretation looks quite cool/interesting, nice :thumbsup:

Glad you have issues sorted :thumbsup:

Mike

[PKay]

Inspiring image Andy.

The hires is quite stunning.

You have me researching how to process 'ultrared'.

Very well done :thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Thanks Mike, Like M42 & M8 & M20, lovely as they are, these are the 'Kraft Cheese' of Nebulas, (as in everyone's got some in their fridge) so it's a challenge to bring something new/different to the genre when imaging these.

Delighted that you enjoyed it. :D



Cheers Peter, I was keen to bring out as much detail as possible in the High Res by carefully masking the Ha & S2 when creating the LUM, and using Topaz NR to the absolute minimum to simply reduce noise and NOT create and artifacts whatsoever.

This PS Hue Saturation formula may help your research...

Sii >360
Ha >330
O3>200

With minor tweaks to taste. :D

[hashanr]

Great image Andy! So much detail :thumbsup:

[Startrek]

Andy,
Super image loads of depth and colour is vibrant
I just have to add another 50 hours to my M16 OSC narrowband image and I might be in the ballpark but probably not
Well done !!
Martin

[Andy01]

Thanks Hasanr, worked hard to render those details in post, and the 'scope performs well. :thumbsup:



Cheers Martin! :D
This one took me well over a month to gather a mere 11 hrs of data over many frustrating and unsuccessful nights, so just keep on plugging away & you'll get there eventually! :thumbsup:

[Retrograde]

I really like this palette Andy and of course the quality of the image is excellent as usual. :thumbsup:

[Peter Ward]

A crisp rendition by any measure.

When compared to straight RGB the duo-band colour makes an interesting variation but masks many of the subtle hues in the region.

My purist quibbles aside, it's an eye-pleasing rendition. :thumbsup:

[JA]

I went for a surf around....
Beautiful image Andy :thumbsup:

Best
JA

[gregbradley]

I like that Andy. One very minor point is the pillars stand out really well but then the rest doesn't like that,so it creates a bit of unreality to the image for me.

But its a statement image of a common object. Hard to stand out from the rest but this one does.

Greg.

[Andy01]

Thanks Pete - appreciate your taking the time to comment! :thumbsup:



Cheers Peter, note the bright reds vs. soft pinks are the result of different wavelength filters, so the subtlties are there to ponder over, perhaps with a nice red in hand! :drink:



Cheers JA, glad you did, makes it worthwhile posting the Hires! :lol:



Thanks Greg, valid point - been pondering that myself, I probably got a bit carried away rendering the details in the pillars as best I could. Amazing how much more detail the S2 shows in them compared to the Ha!

I also created a more traditional (but Andyfied) HST palette version, but it seemed a bit vanilla compared to this one - so I stayed with this instead. :D

Thanks for the feedback! :thumbsup:

[Peter Ward]

For me Martin's sublime rendition (https://www.martinpughastrophotography.spac e/m16) best describes my thoughts on how "natural" M16 colours should look.

Some h-alpha and h-beta and the whole gamut of star colour temperatures
(and, sorry, no blue emissions around the pillars) that are ionizing the surrounding hydrogen.

Shooting from the burb's however requires some lateral thinking...and your rendition provides that in spades :thumbsup:

As for the Red. Bin 407 is working for me at the moment :D

[Andy01]

Thanks Peter, Martin's image is lovely, and given it's in HALRGB, taken with a Planewave under super dark skies it should be! However, as he has not used O3 or S2 in his rendition it's not a like for like comparison.

A quick google of most HOO M16 images shows most have Blue pillars, presumably due to the predominant strength of the O3 signal present. :D

Interestingly though, you mentioned Hb and this "Natural Narrowband" (https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/381666-trifid-nebula-natural-color-narrowband-experiment/?tab=comments#comment-4126869) M20 image from England is well worth a look.

Were it not for the continuing lockdown and financial ramifications, I'd seriously consider purchasing a 2" Chroma Hb filter to experiment with!

Hope you enjoyed the Red! :lol:

[markas]

Super detail over a large expanse! The colours are unusual, as others have noted, but I think they make for a striking image:thumbsup::thumbsup:
Mark

[Andy01]

Thanks Mark, it's always satisfying when/if one can bring something new to a well imaged target. Thanks for the good vibes :D:thanx:

[Paul Haese]

First up I like the colour palette, though there is some detail missing in the jets coming out of the pillars. However, given the size of the scope, I think you have captured quite a bit of detail.

Just some minor observations though; whilst Topaz appears to sharpen data quite well, looking at the full res image it looks like it has over sharpened in some spots and looks blurred in others. I am not sure about this result. The medium res image looks very good though.

Having imaged this object a few times in the past I found that this object lends itself to full narrowband quite well. When I did this, I obtained my best results so far. My recommendation is to do an OIII run on this too and then use that data to complement the data you have already obtained.

Still a nice image.

[matlud]

Another very nice image Andy 👍 -I am liking the natural narrowband palettes. Are you masking and balancing in a similar fashion to Eric Coles technique? Cheers, Mat

[Andy01]

Thanks Paul, that's not a result of Topaz though, just some selective sharpening & blurring - similar shooting a portrait or food shot @ f2.8 - the focussed area retains clarity, and the less interesting surroundings fall away.



Cheers, but there's 3.5 hrs O3 data used already, not sure what you mean by the above?^



Thanks Matthew, whilst I'm aware of Eric's methods, this one was relatively "pure" processing, with some fine tuning of the pillars in the Lum to retain the considerable S2 detail. :thumbsup: