Hi All,
While I've been working to collect more data from my own gear to finish an imaging project (full moon frustrations), I wish to share a collaborative effort on a target that has been my list for sometime. I've worked collaboratively with John for sometime assisting with equipment tuning and bouncing ideas. Some may recall the IC410 image in which John performed the data acquisition and I processed. Anyway without further ado, here's our latest work;
Cederblad 214 (Hubble narrowband palette)
What a single frame image?...yes I've let you down - no mosaic this time! However, I hope its equally pleasing to the eye. I did wrestle with this data set for sometime. The Ha data was sublime, as was the SII...but the OIII killed me. Despite being a narrowband filter, it wasn't immune to the light pollution at the data acquisition site. This required specific gradient removal processing to balance the image. Still a mess however. I don't like the top of the frame. Looks a turbulent mess in my opinion, though it relatively accurate of the scene. USM across each emission line master before colour mapping with clipping masks in photoshop. Very powerful. Allowed for the fainter SII regions to pop through the OIII data. No HaSII:Ha:HAOIII here - pure SII:Ha:OIII mix. The ASA delivers interesting diffraction spikes. Had the same on the IC410 image. Was thinking of chasing them down in photoshop, but they grew on me. A signature stamp of a perfectly collimated ASA - John sure has it tweaked. Other than the OIII gradient, super clean data was obtained from the Apogee U16M. Minor noise reduction via a mask was applied. Could have probably gone stronger, but wanted to avoid a plastic feel. Still trying to perfect the purple star halo desaturation routine. Saturation (seasoned) to taste.
Hope you enjoy it.
All comments welcome.
Cheers