A new look at an old favourite - M8 in Hubble colours

[pmrid]

Here's one from Monday night that I hope you like. It's a close look at the boundary between M8 and NGC6530 and those fabulous dust lanes that mark the wider boundaries of both.
The colours are Hubble palette with S_II, Ha and O-III mapped to RGB. There's an hour in each in 10 minute subs through an EdgeHD14" at full F11 and an ATIK11002M. AOG helped a lot. Couldn't have done it otherwise.
I hope you like it.

Peter

[Hagar]

Very nice Peter. But big and green again. There is a lot you can do with this image to step it up to another level. I just had a bit of a play with sharpening and it responds very well.
Try copying the background layer in PShop and sharpen it quite hard, add a hide all layer mask and paint in the areas you want to highlight with the brush tool. Add a gaussian blur just wide enough to blur the edges and vary the opacity to your taste. By painting in the dark areas and the very bright and detailed areas you only sharpen the highlights and don't destroy the stars, this does lift the 3D effect quite some.

It is nice how it is but with nice data like this it is well worth the effort.

Now what about some RGB while the moon is low.

[pmrid]

Doug, as I think I may have told you, I am on a steep learning curve with imaging at any level other than one-shot colour - so much so that until very recently, I thought a 'layer' was something with feathers, lights you turned on and off, darks were what you had when you didn't have any lights, bias was what you tried not to show except on State-of-Origin nights and flats were what we had before we got apartments.

So, as you can well imagine, I'm going to need some little time and practice to follow your excellent advice.

cheers

Peter.

[Ross G]

Amazing detail Peter.

You are producing some excellent closeups.

Thanks.


Ross.