A Rose by any Other Name Reworked

[Hagar]

Well almost. Not my best but not my worst either.

7 X 10minute exposures due to incoming high cloud. Fully calibrated images.
Telescope: Takahashi FS 102 with Focal Reducer fitted.
Camera: QHY8 cooled CCD
Processing: IP3 and Photoshop CS3

The second image has had the stars reduced a little using IP3

Reworked image is on my last post.

[MrB]

Nice, second image is by far the best.

[jase]

Nice work Doug. Star reduction looks a little harsh. A suggestion... use the colour range tool and selection highlights so the effect is only being applied to the stars. You could also fade the effect by 40 or 50 percent to make it look a little more natural. Well done.

[mill]

Nice image Doug.
I like the second image the most because the star reduction makes the neb more visible.

[renormalised]

Nice piccies....I like #2 as well. The stars look more "natural" in #2. In #1 they look a bit over exposed...too bright.

[Alchemy]

just to be a little different , No 1 is best for me as stars look a little dark haloed in the second .... somewhere in between probably would be better. (remember theres no such thing as a PERFECT image) so dont take it as too critical

cheers clive.

[Hagar]

Thanks for all the comments, so much to learn. I will work on something in between the two and use Jase's method and see how I go.
Don't expect to see the result. One post is enough.
Thanks again

[turbo_pascale]

Don't know if it is just me, but it appears that the top right of the image is sharply in focus, and the bottom left is not (actually mostly the right is OK, and then in general the left is off). Perhaps something not quite lined up in the image train? Focal reducer perhaps?

Or is this a crop from a larger image that was off centre?

Also, purely out of interest, are the diffraction spikes done in software or a result of string/wire on the front of the OTA?

Turbo

[Hagar]

Hi Rob Thanks for the comments and I tend to agree with you on the focus. At this point I cannot explain it. All the shots taken during this run were a real problem to stack and had to have all the correlation stars manually set up where normally I would allow IP3 do it automatically.
For some reason all images shot this week with this setup have suffered the same fate.
Thanks for pointing it out.:shrug:

[atalas]

Looks great Doug ! I like the first version better.

[Hagar]

Taking the fact that the left hand side of the image appeared to be a little out of focus I have spent a bit of time and selectively reduced the star size on the left.
I think it does improve the image a little.

What do you think?

[Peter Ward]

Doug, sorry, but it's somewhat out of focus.

A Taka 102 should deliver needle point stars at this scale.

Sadly no amount of post processing will fix incorrectly focused data. More the pity, as you got all the hard bits (tracking etc.) right.

Stick with it!

[Jen]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: nice one Doug :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Hagar]

I agree with you Peter. I have had some problem with camera alignment so it is about time I went out and purchased a few quality extention tubes to fit the camera and ditch the cheep ones I am currently using.