Eta Carinae - Narrowband with SBIG-STF8300

[cventer]

This is my very first 3 filter Narrowband Image ever.

I am very pleased with the outcome.

Its 15 x 10 min Subs each in Ha, OIII and SII mapped to Hubble Pallet

I used Ken Crawfords Clipping Layer Method to get color balance to my taste.

I am amazed at detail this Scope and Camera combination can pull out with only 4.2 inches of Glass.

Medium and full frame here (http://www.dslrfocus.com/gallery/NGC3372Narrowbandv1.html) much better than attached postage stamp

Feedback most welcome.

Taken with Takahashi FSQ106 and SBIG STF-8300

[alpal]

You'd have to be very pleased with that result.
A high quality image with many pin sharp stars.
Well done with the processing.

[gregbradley]

Wow, that's a corker especially for your first image. Love the colour balance you achieved, perfect.

Only minor thing would be there is some red ringing around a lot of the stars.

I'd say try deconvolution on your S11 master and try to get the FWHM value on a few stars similar to the O111 and Ha.

Or easier, simply select the brighter stars (easiest way is use Noel Carboni action for this), expand it 1 or 2 pixels and feather 1 and use selective colour to pull back the reds.

Greg.

[Mighty_oz]

That's a fantastic effort for a first go :) Got to love those FSQ's Nice framing as well.

[TrevorW]

Very nice indeed, just goes to show how quality equipment effectively provides good data, that coupled with good processing, can result in stunning images.

[Paul Haese]

Working on one similar in colour and tones and using Kens Map tutorial too. I really like your reds and blues together. I never thought I would like narrow band but some styles are clearly more to my tast than others.

Nice work Chris. What filters are you using by the way?

[RobF]

Wonderful colour choice - pleasing to the eye and highlights features very well. Top effort.

[Rigel003]

Lovely image Chris. What a great start to your narrowbanding.

[cventer]

Thanks Mate. Appreciate the feedback



Thanks for advice Greg. I may use selective color with a mask. I already did use deconvolution on SII as well as selective color with reducing magenta, but might take it back a bit more. I dont mind a little bit of a ring as with none the stars just look white and a bit bland.



Thanks. It was one of those I made sure to refocus every hour or so and the raw frames just looked good right off the bat.



Appreciate the feedback. You are certainly spot on. Have a good camera matched to the scope makes such a difference. The STF-8300 and Tak FSQ106 are soulmates. Just meant to be.....:)



Thanks Paul. Took a bit of work to get color to a point I was happy. This time I took my own advice. Got it to where I thought it was good. then slept on it. looked at it and made quite a few adjustments the next day. Biggest tip I read was using selective color on Red and dialing back Cyan channel about -15. This causes the Brown/Orange to turn a nice fiery red/orange.

My filters I use are the 36mm Baader ones that come with STF-8300 Pro package.



Thanks Rob. Appreciate the time to give feedback. :thumbsup::thumbsup:



Thank you. I like the different textures it brings out and with a little work on color channels some pleasing combos of Red/Orange, Green and Blue are possible. Given I image from backyard this kind of imaging is a fair bit easier than LRGB.

[Peter Ward]

What a sublime result. Needle sharp, perfectly guided stars. Great dynamic range and smooth-as.

Looks like the FSQ/STF8300 were made for each other. Nice one! :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Great result Chris, one of the nicer narrowband emission line filter images of this favourite I have seen :thumbsup: the brightness of the neb helps here too I recon.

Mike

[cventer]

Thanks Peter

The image scale and QE seem to be a very good match.

[cventer]

Thaks Mike. Big compliment. :D:D:D

I tweaked the colors a little more and added a little contrast to the Homunculus.

[TheDecepticon]

Awesome! Great colours, love narrow band! :)

[multiweb]

Top shelf. Love the colours. :thumbsup:

[CoolhandJo]

Very nice!

[cventer]

Thanks for looking.


Thanks. I spent half the processing time on color balance.

cheers:thumbsup:

[cventer]

Just found out SBIG selected my image for their image sharing blog

You can see the post here: http://www.sbig.com/astronomical-instruments-blog/chris-venter-eta-carinae-stf-8300/

http://www.sbig.com/astronomical-instruments-blog/chris-venter-eta-carinae-stf-8300/

[strongmanmike]

It's a top image Chris :thumbsup:

Mike