[Andy01 (Andy)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

When doing mosaics in moonlight flatfielding and calibration become critical. Make a star mask to leave the stars alone when doing deconvolution or use a program that does that well such as startools. Save your starmask as a 16bit TIFF so you can reuse it in PS or PI. In PS gradient xterminator does a good job at flattening remaining gradients. But if you start with well calibrated panels close enough to each others in term of illumination then PS won't have any problem blending in the seams. Just before blending you can also tweak contrast/brightness between panels to match them closely, then collapse and blend.

That's good advice thanks Marc!

I like the idea of making a mask in Startools and saving it for use in PS - I'm going to try that one out as I've not yet found a really nice starmask technique for PS.

As to successfully blending these two - well, for a more consistent result, I think it's a reshoot of the top half under a new moon

Thanks for all the tips too

Originally Posted by topheart

Very interesting composition Andy......Great potential when other data added in!!
Cheers,
Tim

Cheers Tim, I'll try not to dissappoint you lol

Originally Posted by Atmos

Looks great Andy! As has been mentioned, some of the larger stars have gone a bit askew. I am assuming that you did some contrast enhancement? If so, it may be a star mask issue.

For people more in the know (or you release some RGB tonight!!!!), a lot of the nebulosity on the top looks like millions of partially resolved stars. Is this an artefact (NR) or just LOTS of stars?

Hey Colin, I probably punished the data too much getting the moonlight gradients out - maybe I need to go back & revisit the basics of stretching mosaics under mixed conditions.

As to the nebulosity - here is a great image by Paul Haese that may better answer your question.

Originally Posted by SimmoW

Nice and different Andy. Will be good to see the other filters if they work out.

Mike might chime in, but the Decon detector app on my phone (only available for Android) has just maxed out .

Cheers Simmo, RGB will have to wait until the planets align again - ie: new moon, clear skies, leave pass + free weekend.

Don't think I used decon as such, but probably overdid one of the other techniques used.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Looking really good so far Andy!
That's not what that nebula is called Andy!
Look forward to seeing your rendition though!

Cheers Marcus, Not sure of it's exact name but Wolf's Head has a nice ring to it - Think it may have been christened that by Paul Haese

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Nice one Andy. I also have some widefield data for the Dark Tower. You've caught that wider area of Ha around it nicely. I hadn't seen that before. My data is not as wide field as yours.

Greg.

Cheers Greg, yes I agree it's a very interesting region with lots going on - looks quite stormy in fact - I couldn't find many similar compositions on the web for reference but there is one here fyi

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

As you seem to be aware of, some relatively minor technical issues to sort to make it really shine, sure, but overall and viewed at the standard size when opening in Astro Bin, t'is a really great vista of two objects rarely imaged as a pair, well done. The final product should really look rather nice, especially if you try keeping to the more natural processing/colour approach you showed in your SH2-12 piece

Mike

Thanks Mike, I appreciate the positive feedback
I'll try to keep the Andyfication low and the natural look high!

As mentioned above, it might take a while for the opportunity to present itself again to go full HaRGB mosaic, but fortunately these objects arn't going anywhere anytime soon! - (and I've since found another rarely imaged gem that I want to attempt)