The 4 stars of M20

[allan gould]

I tried to process this such that the colours were muted as well as keeping the four stars that illuminate M20 as separate stars without blowing the black and white points of the image. Contains 2hr Ha (10min subs) taken with QSI 583 combined with 60 min RGB taken with QHY8 camera. Aligned with Registar and processed with PS3.
I was happy with the Ha as there is a lot of faint background dust in M20 that normally is processed out.
Taken from lovely light polluted BrisVegas with additional illumination kindly provided by Stefan's obelisk, a real boon to those that try to find/enjoy the night sky and a good contributor to global warming.
Unfortunately I think its going to suffer from compression to a jpeg image (not Stefan's ph@ll@s).
Comments welcome

[renormalised]

Stefan's Obelisk....nothing a few sticks of dynamite can't fix:):P

Methinks Mr Ackery used raw bleach on the former Premier's brain instead of his hair:):P No one in their right mind would've approved building it.

Nice shot, considering:)

[telemarker]

Good detail in the nebula and great colour. :thumbsup: I really like this image, what scope did you use?

[gregbradley]

Fabulously sharp and detailed. Wow your focus was absolutely spot on and your scope very sharp.

The blue neb colour seems off to me - too much magenta in it.
I'd try selective colour and play with the sliders for blues to get the shade more spot on. The muted reddish/pink for the emission neb looks good.

Greg.

[allan gould]

Thanks Greg, Keith and Carl for the comments. I'll try and put your comments into action.
The scope I used was a 10" SCT with f6.3 focal reducer. The scope is about 15 years old and a real freak as far as I'm concerned. I get a flat field from it, focus once per imaging run (that includes meridian flips) and there is very little mirror shift when focusing. The contrast and detail I can get with it are great. It was the first scope I ever owned and I'll never sell it.

[h0ughy]

nice work Allan

[jjjnettie]

I really really like the way you've processed this one. Noice!

[allan gould]

Thanks for the kind comments Dave and JJJ. I hope to get some narrowband on M20 and present it as a Hubble pallette.
Meanwhile Ive muted the blue as suggested and it appears to show more of the dust and different levels in the blue reflection nebula.

[Hagar]

Beautifully done Allan. The fine detail right into the core is fantastic.
Well done.

[peter_4059]

Gee Alan,

I was going to say the blue looks amazing! Nice sharp image.

Peter

[allan gould]

Doug and Peter,
Again thanks for the comments as the feedback is important when you try to present a good picture.
I really have to come to grips with the colour aspect of my photos as I look at them on different PCs and I see it differently each time. Subtle some times and garish at others. Im off to getting a colour card etc, but then if I do a Hubble pallette shot no-one will know the difference. :lol:

[Bassnut]

Well, muted is the word, usually this is presented as flourescent as hell, but I like the way youve done it, top work but the repro is a bit overdone, looks a bit plastic, and somethings gone wrong with the bright stars.