Lagoon Nebula - another quicky.

[strongmanmike]

After another 5hrs of data collection for my other project I had another short window before twighlight on Sunday morning...ahh..there's the Lagoooooon, gotchya!

Seeing was pretty poor compared to the Eta Carina shot on friday morning and there was a lot of moisture in the air before dawn. I was taking the last blue exposure as I noticed the sky getting light :doh:phew...good timing :thumbsup:

Very simple LRGB processing in Astroart4 then adjusted in PS6, no noise reduction used either. The Proline at -35C works a treat on bright objects even with short exposures (a great benifit of a cooled CCD) and with good accurate flats, using my AstroHandy light ring, the processing was pretty straight forward. As with the Eta shot there was no convoluted mixing pot processing involved - just good simple home cooking :thumbsup:

I've gone for a more vibrant look this time, hope it isn't too strong for some?

Colour (1.5meg)

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/94322970/original

Luminance (1meg)

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/image/94324322/original

Mike

[montewilson]

Mike - How do you focus?

[strongmanmike]

Why? Does it look out of focus?

In Astroart4 I draw a box around a star in an image and use the electronic focuser manually until I have the focus star as small as possible - simple :)

Mike

[iceman]

Georgeous image, Mike. Beautiful colours.

[acropolite]

ditto what Mike said, to me the colour is perfect:thumbsup:

[Phil]

Stunning shot Mike well done
Phil

[tornado33]

Very nice. Colour looks fine to me. Yes focussing is easy, when I had a SB7 here for a night years ago, it was easy enough to focus, by selecting a star, it would only download that small area so would update so fast it was live video, so can focus in real time.

With the luminance R HA, is it equal weight to the R and HA or more to one or the other in the processing?

Whats the other project? I take it we here will be the first to see it here when its finshed :)
Scott

[leon]

I like it Mike very nice indeed, focus looks pretty right to me, and colours are spot on, well done.

Leon

[Bassnut]

Very smooth Mike, still with the blue halos, but your excused :D

Im getting bored, when you donig NB?.

[EzyStyles]

nicely done mike. considering its the end of night sqeezing in last frames before the sunrise. love the colours too!

[strongmanmike]

Yeh the blue halos seem to be more obvious on some monitors, they aren't noticable on a glossy print luckily :D

The tiny stars in a Halpha image are hardest to match with the blue stars so I will need to work harder,..I think my eye is starting to tolerate them though. The same thing can be seen in a lot of Rob Gendlers work too as he likes to push the saturation.

NB? If I want to see psycadelic meaningless modern art I'll go to the national galley man! :lol:

[iceman]

:rofl: made me laugh!

[strongmanmike]

That Luminance is a 50/50 mix of 30min Ha with 20min Red

Project?...what project? :whistle:

Mike

[Ric]

A beauty Mike, very well done for a quicky as you put it.

Cheers

[Bassnut]

Mike, select colour (on stars), grow, feather, minimum filter (in PS). Nasty, but it works (with care). OK, youd rather slit yr throat than do that, whatever. mmm "psycadelic meaningless modern art", im hurt, devistated, punk. I dont care:whistle:

[Bassnut]

:d

[jase]

Nice one Mike. Keep them coming.

[Tamtarn]

Really a top image Mike. Very smooth and the colour tone is just perfect.