California Nebula Mosaic now in colour

[Stevec35]

Well here it is. Not perfect but after something like 72 hours of imaging time for both the Ha and colour I'm not sure I want to do too much more with it. Due to a pointing error the colour is slightly chopped off at the right. Given the moon is threatening I would probably have to wait until next dark sky to correct that so I thought I would release it as is. I have to say that I still prefer the Ha version myself but I suppose the colour is quite pretty.

Cheers

Steve

http://members.pcug.org.au/~stevec/ngc1499_Maknewt_QSI.htm

[Larryp]

Looks great, Steve!:thumbsup:

[Stevec35]

Thanks Larry

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Wow 72 hours!!

I do like the colours, most others I've see have been more red.

It would make a great wall hanger.

Cheers,

Justin.

[atalas]

Nice work Steve.

[RickS]

I like the Ha version too but the colour is interesting. Great work, Steve!

[Martin Pugh]

Steve
Not sure about the colour version there....but there is a systemic problem with these kind of targets - they look great in Ha (as yours does), but they are emission nebulae and just plain red.

You have also lost the contrast in the colour blend. If you restore that, and perhaps back off the saturation a tad, it would look better.

Sorry to be negative.

cheers
Martin

[Ross G]

Hi Steve,

I love the colour version.

So many hours of exposure, what a marathon.

Well worth it as it looks fantastic!

Ross.

[Stevec35]

Thanks Ross



Thanks for the feedback Martin. I certainly agree that the Ha is better than the colour. Part of the problem I feel is that my colour data is a bit thin and I should have got more. One of the panels should be reshot too. I'll have another look at the data and see what I can do but I suspect that I'm not going to be able to do much better than this.



Thanks Louie



Thanks Justin

[dvj]

Well I have to admit I liked your Ha grayscale much better because the HDR processing showed very fine detail.

[Stevec35]

I don't disagree with you at all John. The RGB data was neither as deep or as good quality as the Ha and so was less able to be processed aggressively. I've just uploaded a slightly more detailed colour version but the Ha is still the winner by far I think. Actually I originally wasn't going to do RGB but so many people asked me to I thought I had better.