Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
Sorry Greg...I'm going to be brutally frank on this one...
As Maxwell Smart was fond of saying "missed it by that much"
I've taken the liberty of uploading a section of your image to illustrate my point...weird-purple dots at 2 o'clock ...which I guess are Red/Blue registration errors. Stars are a tad elongated...but hey...many including yours truly... often don't nail that down.
Getting back to the registration error, it will kill correct star colouration, with many of them looking a bland white, rather than reflect their true colour-temperatures.
You've also got a horizontal row CCD blemish...about 1/3rd the way down the chip that could be easily taken out with a bad pixel map.
The nebula colours are pastel looking to my eye, and the dynamic range of the data looks both clipped and compressed...more the pity... as you totally nailed the framing 
That said, I can see that sublime AP RHA singing an Aria for you soon  |
I checked this again and yes you are right and my mistake. I have processed this image a lot over a period of time and I have mistakenly posted the wrong version. I had detected the registration error at some point and went back and reregistered the images. As I recall I ended up using PixInsight for the reregistration as for some reason CCDstack was not doing a good enough job. I think perhaps because I was subtlely adjusting tilt/tip on the fly over several nights and it may have shifted the geometry a tad and PI could handle that but not CCDStack. Anyways check out the image again and the stars are all nice and pastel coloured and no registration errors to speak of. I did not notice the line when I looked. Usually that dark subtracts or bias subtracts out but occasionally they can be pesky. CCDstack is not particularly user friendly for removing lines. Perhaps PI may become my default registration software as I believe it removes lines much more easily.
As far as colours being too pastel on my newly calibrated external monitor (Samsung LED) it seems quite vivid but on my laptop it does not and does look pastel. So if the consensus is that its quite pastel overall I would love to know as I trying to gain confidence with this new monitor.
Same links.
Greg.