NGC2070 Tarantula Nebula

[joshman]

This has always been one of the hardest targets for me to process. I think it was mostly due to the really intricate and busy nebulosity. The exceptionally strong OIII signal can also be quite overpowering when combining channels.

But I think with the skills and techniques I've learnt in Pixinsight, I've finally been able to produce an image that I'm reasonably happy with. This was mostly captured as a fill-in target at the end of the night, so I was limited with framing options. I might capture this target again later in the season with a better orientation and maybe a wider field as well.

See it real big on Astrobin here. (https://astrob.in/bbx35t/0/)

The capture details are on the Astrobin Page; for processing, a fairly standard workflow:

Stars:
LinearFit > ChannelCombination > SPCC > StarX > Stars Stretched in GHS
NB:
LinearFit > mild BlurX(non-stellar only) > StarX > NoiseX > GHS > ChannelCombination > NarrowbandNormalisation > CurvesTransformation

PixelMath to bring the stars back, BlurX to reduce star-size.

C&C welcome, I'm always looking to improve!

Thanks for looking and Clear Skies!

[Andy01]

Hi Josh,
Nice colours but it's my opinion that you've compressed the dynamic range too much by making the core too dark. it's meant to be the brightest part of the LMC. :)

CS
Andy

[joshman]

Thanks Andy, I can definitely see that. It's probably the most common issue I find with my processing, and somethign i'll need to pay more attention to.

I was probably overly cautious of not blowing out all the detail in that incredible core.

[TrevorW]

Astrobin image is amazing really brought out a lot of finer detail, couloirs maybe a bit clipped looking at the histogram but otherwise impressive :)

[joshman]

Thanks Trevor! I'll have to look into it. I couldn't see anything clipped when looking around the image in PixInsight. I wonder if the Jpeg compression has played hookey with it?

[TrevorW]

Clipped sorry thats probably wrong word to use :)

[gregbradley]

A nice Tarantula but what Andy said seems to be the main issue. It could show a wider range of dark areas and bright areas.

Greg.

[joshman]

Thanks for the input everyone, it seems like I need to work on the overall image contrast a bit more.


I've had another run at it, and hopefully it's a little more pleasing, though in retrospect i think i might have swung the image in the opposite direction.



You can see it big on Astrobin. (https://astrob.in/bbx35t/B/)