Eta Ha RGB Apr 2011

[dugnsuz]

Hi all,
Another Eta - but why not!?

Astro 40D (Avg Temp approx -16ºC according to the thermometer!)
Canon 400mm f5.6L @ f5.6, iso1600
Ha - 405mins total exposure time
RGB - 185mins exp time

RGB images stopped down to around f8.8 using external aperture mask.
Ha taken through Astronomik 12nm Ha EOS clip filter

Curse the Salmon Pink and those blue Ha/RGB blended stars!!
No doubt this will be repro'd mercilessly a la Sid!

Cheers for looking

Higher Res...
http://s327.photobucket.com/albums/k461/doug-robertson/?action=view&current=8j.jpg

Doug:thumbsup:

[Craig_L]

Wow!! Great work Doug. Could be your "El Cid":rofl:. Lots of detail and I like the star colours as well.

[strongmanmike]

Dunno what you're talking about :shrug:...this is excellent, all I would do is get a little more colour into the stars and up the saturation a tad.

Great job..what's this nebula called again?

MIke

[multiweb]

Top shot Doug. Never get tired of Eta. It's the new M8. :P ... which is coming round the corner actually... watch out!

[[1ponders]]

Nice shot Dougie, very nice. Give yourself some credit mate, there's an awful lot of submerged reflection nebula in there as well, muckin' up the Ha. I know Eta gets done to death by many people, but its not an easy one to get right. As the Sidonizer said, up the saturation a bit and see how it looks then.

That's why I don't do RGB mate, those damn blended star halos :lol: Too frustrating for me. Good on you for getting in there and having a damn fine go.

[strongmanmike]

....:scared2:...:scared:

He he...probably do it with Agi actually, just for you Marc :D

[multiweb]

Looking forward to it.

[richardo]

I agree with others comments Doug, you've done a great job of combining rgb to the narrow band... this is not an easy thing to accomplish well..
You're being hard on yourself, this has come out really well and I think your colour is actually pretty darn good.

Quite amazing resolution for a lens.... looks like a keeper.

Rich

[gregbradley]

That's a very good Eta Doug.

If you want to tone down the pinkish hues and up the reds the easiest way is to use selctive colour/reds/ turn down magenta and cyan somewhat and up the yellow and you'll get more reds than pinks.

As far as stars - I don't really see blue stars on my monitor but I know the effect you mention. You can set Ha layer to lighten mode that way it should not be affecting the stars. If you used another Ha + Luminance type approach then you can use an inverted mask to block the stars from the Ha + L.

You can select the stars easily using colour range/highlights, then expand by 2-4 pixels and feather by 2. Then use colour balance tool (ctrlB) and adjust the sliders to suit then add more saturation (ctrlU) and up the sat on the stars.

Or add an earlier image with LRGB stars to it.

I just did a 7 filter image LRGBS11HaO111. Using lighten mode and the stars are all LRGB and so are most of the features but the narrowband where it was interesting came through and nowhere else. It worked wonderfully.

You gotta whip that Ha into line. Whip whip whip or it takes over!!

Greg.

[dugnsuz]

Thanks Craig - it's growing on me now!


I don't know what I'm talking about either Mike! Thanks for the kind comments - took your suggestions on board and the repros are underway.


M8 - can't wait for the ol' M8/M20 double!


Cheers Paul - under my semi dark skies Eta is so 'in yer face' that it dominates!


Thanks Rich:thumbsup:


Thanks for the very helpful tips Greg - tried out a couple of the easier PS fixes you mentioned. Hopefully haven't gone overboard, just given the original image a bit of a lift. Before and After below to A/B...

Doug

Hi Res Repro...
http://s327.photobucket.com/albums/k461/doug-robertson/?action=view&current=8k.jpg

[multiweb]

The gain in saturaton brings up the red nicely in places. Nice repro. :thumbsup:

[dugnsuz]

Thanks Marc - probably shouldn't post 'first go' processing attempts though.
I have found that it takes many attempts to manipulate an image - one only gets to know how much an image can be stretched and pushed only after numerous processing runs. This is a part of the whole imaging process that I love.

Cheers
Doug