More dust

[Paul Haese]

This month I have again hunted down some more dust and reflection nebula. Inspired by Tom Davis I am now on a quest to hunt down dark dust lanes and reflection nebula. The image needs more data before I will be satisfied. I am doing 15 minute subs on the red and green and 20 minutes on blue and luminance. I have been using this formula for a while and I think it generally works. I have tried not to go over the top with the saturation and been careful of the star sizes, which can be tough given the star field.

Please let me know what you like about the image and what you don't like about it.

Click here (http://paulhaese.net/NGC6589.html)for image.

[sjastro]

Wow excellent image Paul.

Regards

Steven

[rcheshire]

Like the dust... fabulous gallery Paul. Too much saturation spoils an image.

[strongmanmike]

The only thing I don't like about the image is ...that you were actually able to take it :sadeyes:... all we have here is...:windy::cloudy:

I would up the saturation...but then David Malin wouldn't like it :lol:...:sadeyes:.. :doh:

Mike

[atalas]

Looks great! well done.

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys appreciated.




Yeah well we have had similar for the last three weeks, but I did suffer for my art last night. It got down to -3 last night at the house and I had to get up in the middle of the night to put on the air con so I could sleep without feeling like I was freezing under a thick quilt and long johns in bed.

As to the saturation, I am with you Mike. I will probably take a look at this and I don't care what Mr Malin likes or not really. Film is film and digital is digital mate and well you know my theory from there. ;) David has his opinion and I have mine. For the comp though you need to respect the judge and give him what he wants. :thumbsup:

[Octane]

Paul,

That is a fantastic image. There is so much subtle detail throughout -- very, very nice.

Your stars are even resembling Martin Pugh's with those tiny, tiny diffraction spike effects.

Love it.

H

[Paul Haese]

Thanks H; certainly not intended and quite a compliment. I continue to work on perfecting my images, good data always helps. Now I have the PME pointing and guiding like a beast it makes for easy collection and more time to sit and think about processing. Although in this instance the star spikes just happened. Most like some aberration in the imaging train.:shrug: Certainly no skill.;)

[gregbradley]

You've done everything exceptionally well Paul. My only comment and I'd say the same about my own image of the same area - is it lacks punch. Its a difficult area to make impactful.

So what you were saying about colour saturation is spot on. That's part processing and part total exposure time. Of course to get a good separation between the dust and the stars is going to take multihoured exposures. I think there are a lot of nice blue stars in that field as well.

I am only making the comment because I know you are aiming for the highest possible image because it is a super image already.

Perhaps check Thomas Davis version of the same area to see how his turned out. His version would be the best on the net.

Greg.

[Paul Haese]

Something to think about Greg and yes multi houred collection is probably needed in this instance. I will plan for 10 or so hours and see how it pans out. That generally allows for dust to become a little foreground looking. I will take a look at Tom's image, and see where I can improve mine. No doubt every where. :) Agree with the punch. All those stars make it hard.

[Paul Haese]

Ok I ramped up the colour saturation just a little. Not enough data there yet to work it a lot, but I think this one is slightly better. Opinions? The image attached is what it looked like before. The link above now contains the revised image.

[Ross G]

A beautiful photo Paul.

I love the contrast of colours with the black.

Thanks.

Ross.

[p1taylor]

That is a grate image Paul.

peter

[gregbradley]

I like the revised image.

I think to do any better than that its going to take more exposure time.

Greg.

[Paul Haese]

Agreed

[John Hothersall]

Wow thats a splendid image and the colour just right, variation in the dark dust right down to black is splendidly well controlled.

John.

[jase]

Excellent Paul. I think the saturation is good on the second pass. The first does provide a natural feel however. The image displays colour confidence and is clean. Great work.

[Alchemy]

I like this one, shot this myself only a few weeks back, of interest is the small dust cloud inside the reflective nebulosity, when I shot it I thought I had a dust spot, but it's definitely there.

Nice colors and smooth ..... One to be pleased about.:thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

Me too; initially I thought it was a dead pixel that did not get picked up, then I saw it in another channel, so I figured it was meant to be.

Thanks Jase. Saturation can always be hard.

[Leonardo70]

Hi Paul, excellent image of wonderful subject.
I like the 2^ satured version.

Ciao,
Leo

[Phil Hart]

Nice work Paul. Saturation and colour balance looks good to my eyes in the version you show now. Nice detail too particularly in the reflection neb bits.

Phil

[Tandum]

I like this Paul, star colours are great.
Have you done G2V on your filters at all? I'm interested that you say 15min RG and 20min B, I shot a g2v star from the backyard last week and these baader filters gave me 1.02:1:1.36 on this 8300 sensor. A lot more blue is needed than I thought. I recombined a couple of images with those offsets and got a real improvement in the colour mix.

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Phil.

Robin, nothing as fancy as that. I have read a little up on this and went with around 1.2-1.4x on exposure time. Raising the blue up to 20 minutes seemed the logical choice and it does to see to help quite a lot with my images of late. Combining I just use 1:1:1. The extra exposure time does the job over the combine. The response of the astronomiks filters seems to be working with the sensor. So just empirical evidence being employed. I will look into this a little more though.

[multiweb]

Very nice colors and great details in the neb. Well done indeed. :thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

Beautiful Paul! I love refl nebs too so this will go on my todo list!

Cheers, Marcus

[Tom Davis]

This is lovely, Paul!! I too would up the saturation a little bit, but I have been accused by many of over saturating my images. Congratulations on imaging reflection nebulae. They are fun and challanging!

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

-Tom

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys; much appreciated.

Marcus this one is easy. I made sure to image the blue from 40 degrees up to avoid blue extinction.

Thanks Tom, your work is lots of inspiration to me.

[Ken Crawford]

That is a rich field - wonderfully done. There is nothing wrong with doing deep on your subs and really overwhelm the read noise. Along with a good dither you get that really smooth data.

I love the fact that more people are going longer - deeper on a target vs how many objects can I shoot this month. Deep data is also so much easier to process and gives you more options.

Congrats on a fine image! I am sorry that I did not see you at AAIC!

Regards,

[iceman]

Beautiful image, Paul. The reprocess is much better.

This image is now IOTW (http://www.iceinspace.com.au).

[Paul Haese]

That is my thinking too Ken. Going deep has been working for me so far, so I will stick with it for now. Perhaps I ought to read up more on the physics, just for the sake of completeness.

I am sorry I could not make it either. Budget is quite tight and now it looks doubtful whether I am going to Exmouth too for Jupiter imaging this year.

Thanks Mike for the image of the week. Not expected but appreciated.

[marco]

A little masterpiece as usual Paul, you have a special touch for image processing. Colors are perfectly balanced and the overall look is very natural!

Clear Skies
Marco

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Marco. I can only try. It sometimes takes many repro's to get the balance right and the help of others too.

[richardo]

Nice job on this Paul..... congrats on the IIS image of the week!
Good to see you taking into account blue extinction factors at low altitudes.
I'm no too sure a great deal of people are aware of this factor.
Colour looks good and nice to see a larger version from the image I took of this recently showing the extent of those lovely golden stars and the dark neb that resides within.

I use my G2V calibrated ratios and add the multiplier factors to the RGB to arrive at the corrected weight for the altitude I image at.. I have an XL spread sheet I download off the net that gives me these factors for all altitudes.
Takes a lot of the guess work out of colour mixing.

Nicely done.

Rich

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Rich. I will take a look at this G2V stuff a bit more in depth. Do you have a link for the downloaded data?

[richardo]

No worries Paul, sent you a private mail to the link of the xl spread sheet. Just uploaded it to my website for you.

Just find your setups ratio via a G2V star at the meridian and multiply the factors in RGB to what ever altitude you were shooting the object at.

Here's another version with different factors I just found. Might try these as they are a little different than the ones I've had for quite a few years. Also there's an explanation on the page.
http://starizona.com/acb/ccd/advtheorycolor.aspx

Cheers
Rich

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Rich, some reading to undertake. Thanks once again for doing this.:thumbsup:

[richardo]

Not a worry at all Paul.
Only pleased to help!
BTW, have decided to go with an OAG... hopefully will be here next week, fingers crossed....
Something else to keep my hair falling out:rolleyes:

All the best
Rich

[Paul Haese]

I have now completed collection of the data on this image for those interested. I think it is smooth enough overall and still shows lots of detail.

[gregbradley]

Yes that is noticeably better Paul. It has more vibrance and the dust is more luminous and the distinction between the dust and the background is clearer.

What was the final number of hours you took?

Greg.

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Greg. I ended up with just a tad over 6 hours in the end. Reasonably short by my standards. I think I would need to go another 6 hours to get any substantial boost. Not bad for a 4" scope though.:)

[gregbradley]

Its an excellent image Paul. I like your persistence.
It definitely is the way to go - 6-12 hours per image. It requires a decent run of weather and also extra discipline and not flick from one target to another.

I have accumulated about 6-15 hours on several objects lately ready for processing and it looks like we're in for another several days of clear nights.

Greg.

[Stevec35]

Like it a lot Paul! I assume that some of this data was what you were gathering when I was there.

Thanks again for your hospitality.

Cheers

Steve

[Paul Haese]

Yes Steve, there is about three hours worth included here. It was our pleasure to take care of you.

I trust you had a safe trip back to Canberra

[Stevec35]

Yes I did and after a week of clear skies and frosts in Canberra the cloud has returned. Obviously my trip was poorly timed.