NGC 3324 - Gabriela Mistral Nebula

[Swarvy]

G'day folks,

First light with the Askar 85phq. Around 20 hours of integration. First time using calibration frames. Maybe over did it abit but feel like my post processing is improving with each image.

CC welcome

Cheers,
Adam

[oska]

Fantastic shot Adam! Really great detail and the depth is mesmerising :thumbsup:

[Bodon]

Wow, looks bloody great!

[AstroViking]

What John and Steve have said - great image with amazing levels of detail and a good colour selection.

[Dave882]

Stunning!!

[Kuz]

Awesome capture mate

[Swarvy]

Cheers folks! Your all too kind :)

[xelasnave]

Wonderful image..I thought I had already commented ???
I certainly hope I can have a go and get half as decent ...well done.
Alex

[Estram]

A great capture!
I really like the colours. Intially I thought the sharpening was a bit much, but the more I look at it, the less I think so.
Well done!

[Swarvy]

Thanks guys!

I had exactly the same thoughts Michael.

Alex, i think you replied to a comment i made on your guiding issues? :lol:

[strongmanmike]

Quite an eye catching result Adam :thumbsup: Coincidentally, yesterday I posted a close up version of Gabby, in the regular deep sky section of the forum, before I came here and its cool to see someone else has come up with essentially the same colour palette on this area, nice :thumbsup:

It is only a small size image but it appears very sharp and quite detailed, can I ask what process and tools you used for this aspect?

Mike

[Nikolas]

great image would be nice to know thw camera used

[Swarvy]

Hey Mike,

In pixinsight I use WBPP > Dynamic crop > SPCC > BlurX > NoiseX > StarX > GHS > SCNR > Curves transformation. Make luminance layer with the Ha data then combine with the RGB image. More Curves transformation. Then move to photoshop. Unsharp mask > high pass filter > camera raw filter. Then any minor tweets to the colour I’ll do in photoshop. Back in Pixinsight, edit and recombine the star layer. Most of the detail seems to come out in the photoshop part, I’m sure it can be done in Pixinsight i just have no idea how :rofl:

Im using 600FL and asi533mm. It’s a good sized target for this setup as I only cropped the edges after stacking. For framing I just used asi air plus and a few test exposures.

Hope this answers your question

Cheers,
Adam

[Swarvy]

Hi Nik,

I’m using ASI533mm

Cheers,
Adam

[strongmanmike]

Thanks for the detailed reply :thumbsup:



Given you said you used BlurEx before going into PS, this is surprising to hear.? :question: are you feeling it is more the detail or the contrast that improves with the Unsharp mask and High pass done after BlurEx..?

Mike

[Swarvy]

While BlurX does bring out some details I think I mostly use it for the Star reduction. I definitely feel like most of the finer details are brought out with unsharp mask and high pass filter. I like using the texture slider in camera raw filter also. Most of the contrast is done in curves transformation in pixinsight.

Iv only been doing astrophotography for a few months so my post processing knowledge is very limited. I’m just away with the fam for a few nights but I’d be happy to send you a before and after of the photoshop section of editing once I get back if your interested.

Cheers,
Adam

[strongmanmike]

Thanks Adam, you have described your approach nicely, so no need to send the before and after. All the best with your imaging, for such a new comer to all this palaver, you are going very well :thumbsup:

Again, an eye catching image :)

Mike