Ic2944 - Now in COLOUR!!!

[DavidTrap]

The results of the last couple of nights of fiddling in the backyard.

13 x 15min Ha subs, stacked in Maxim, DDP, sharpened and curve adjustment - just a quick process to check on quality, nothing fancy.

Really need to learn how to use PixInsight...

Was very sad when I found out I have to work late on Friday night - hopefully the weather holds for Saturday night and I can collect some LRGB under dark skies. Might try and collect some L at least when I get home tomorrow.

C&C welcome

DT

[RickS]

Looks pretty sharp, David. Hope you get some clear skies on Saturday.

Cheers,
Rick.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Rick - hope your trip is productive too!

DT

[RobF]

Nice work David.
Fingers crossed for weather and time on Sat.

[jjjnettie]

Very nice David. :)

[TrevorW]

Yes agree nice image

[allan gould]

Great image David. Doing Ha from the suburbs really brings out some details.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Rob, JJJ, Trevor & Allan.

Very happy to be gathering some photons again. The weather has been delightful the last week or so. Just a pain to have to work to support this habit!

Must look at getting some more filters and doing some NB images, rather than just Ha blends into LRGB.

DT

[ozstronomer]

Looks great David lots of detail there, well done.

Tonight is not promising, lets hope tomorrow clears.

[CoolhandJo]

Very nice depth to the image

[stevous67]

Very nice 3D effect David. Well placed in FOV too.

Steve

[peter_4059]

Great result David. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves with the extra data.

[[1ponders]]

Nice shooting David. Lovely detail. :cool2:

[Ross G]

Great detail David and so sharp.


Ross.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Geoff, Paul, Steve, Ross & Paul.

As for sharpness, the guiding graph was very stable, and the FWHM were in the 3-4 range. Seeing hasn't been all that great lately - still lots of moisture about.

DT

[multiweb]

Wow! You're on a roll David. Superb result. :thumbsup:

[DavidTrap]

High praise coming from you Marc - thanks!

DT

[PeterM]

Wow David how sharp is that. Such detail a fabulous image.
Peter

[DavidTrap]

Hi all,

I've finally had a bit of time (stuck at home on call this weekend) in which to attempt to tackle PixInsight.

Here is my first effort. I followed a tutorial on the PI website about processing a Ha image.

I calibrated the individual subs in Maxim and then stacked them in PI. It seems to give a better result, although the image is mirror flipped??

I then applied a histogram transfer, created masks and applied ATrosWavelets, then selective ACDNR.

Link (http://users.tpg.com.au/dctrap/astrophotos/IC2944_Ha.jpg) to full size JPEG

Comments welcome,

DT

[RickS]

David,

Looks like a nice improvement!

According to the PI guys, they are right about the coordinate origin of FITS files and just about everybody else is wrong. You can change the behaviour of PI, however, by going to Edit Preferences for FITS files in the Format Explorer. Change the Coordinate Origin option.

Cheers,
Rick.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Rick,

I've edited the previous post and have added a link to a full size JPEG.

DT

[gregbradley]

Very very sharp David.

Greg.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Greg,

Even my dearest could see the difference!

Have been called in to work tonight - probably going to be here till dawn at least. Going to shout myself some more NB filters as a reward!

DT

[astronobob]

Thats come up a real treat David, Lots going on in there, awesome Image :cool2:

[naskies]

Wow - very sharp and detailed. Can't wait for the colour version.

[cfranks]

Hope you don't mind but I tried a bit of Noise Reduction and MorphologicalTransformation with PixInsight. Gives a little more clarity to the nebulosity. The effect is a little restricted because it was a .jpg but might be of interest to you. Again, I hope I haven't overstepped the mark by altering someone else's image!

Charles

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Bob & Dave - will hopefully get some more processing time this week, but it looks like work will intervene again...

Thanks for the processing example Charles. I assume you're using morphological transformation for star size reduction. I do like the Ha shots, because the stars are usually smaller than luminance shots, but the additional reduction doesn't go astray.

DT

[astronobob]

Awesome Dave, luv to be the owner of these Images ! !
Nice work

[Bassnut]

The repro is pretty deep, and sharp as. Nice 3d effect too. Excellent work.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Bob & Fred.

Have ordered those extra NB filters too!

DT

[DavidTrap]

Ok - a further installment - LRGB.

Quite a learning curve merging all this in PI.

I think the stars are too overpowering, but I couldn't get a good reduction with a morphological transformation and star mask.

Link (http://users.tpg.com.au/dctrap/astrophotos/IC2944_LRGB.jpg) to full resolution.

Comments welcome!

DT

HaLRGB may take a little longer... As will deconvolution, and proper use of a lot of other PI functions!

[RickS]

Very nice, David! I agree about the stars needing to be tamed. I've spent the last three nights trying different ways to do that on one of my images and still haven't decided what works best :)

Cheers,
Rick.

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Rick,

Just compared it to previous efforts. The lite-star versions were usually Ha blends. The object is within a fairly dense starfield, so they might be par for the course!

I've been trying some different techniques, but if I push it to far, the image gets soft or the tiny stars start to merge into little lines that looks like crazing on an old china plate.

DT

[RickS]

David,

I don't have such a dense star field but I have a bunch of largish stars that I'd like to de-emphasise so that my galaxies (NGC 4038 and NGC 4039) stand out more. I have devised many clever, but ultimately unsuccessful ways to do this so far ;) I can achieve the desired result but that usually causes some other less desirable side-effect. Still, I'm learning lots of new tricks for combining masks in PixelMath. I have a feeling I might finally get close with another night of playing... I could get there by blending a couple of different versions of the image in Photoshop but I'd rather not "cheat" if I can avoid it.

Cheers,
Rick.

[DavidTrap]

Sounds like you're operating on a different plane to myself, Rick!

DT

[RickS]

I hope the results eventually reflect the effort :D

[stevous67]

Wooww! That's great David. Nice level of detail. Congratulations.

Steve

[RobF]

Nice LRGB David.
All you need now is Fred to come along and say you should get rid of ALL the stars :P

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Steve & Rob.

I played a bit with PI tonight and tried Rogelio's star reduction technique. His method for making masks was better than what I'd been doing previously.

Will try again over the weekend and hopefully produce something better.

DT

[naskies]

Great colour version. It sounds like you're starting to get the hang of PI?

[trent_julie]

That looks stunning David, well done

Trent

[troypiggo]

Hey Dave, must've missed this thread earlier. Great stuff.

I also played with Rogelio's PI star mask method, but couldn't quite get it tweaked for my images. What I've found works for me is a simple star mask, and using MorphTransform erosion at .3-.5 instead of 1.0. I think he uses one of the other algorithms, but I found erosion worked better. Don't try to do it all in one hit, else you do end up with those weird patterns and stars linking up. Do it once, then generate another star mask, then do again, little bits at a time.

For the Ha blending into LRGB, I've been tinkering with that HaRGB combination script (http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3446.0). It seems to work better on some images than others. I've been playing around with using linear images, non-linear/stretched, LRGB vs just RGB. I think the best results I've had are with LRGB stretched, Ha stretched, then use those 2 images in the script. Not sure if that makes sense. Can post more detail later if you like.

[strongmanmike]

This a great result Dave be interested to see the HaRGB blend result keep at it mate :thumbsup:.

Mike

[DavidTrap]

Thanks for the comments Dave, Trent, Troy & Mike.

This weekend hasn't been the weekend of processing I thought it might be...

Hopefully I'll have more luck this week. Troy - I'll look into that script.

DT