Ngc 6563

[rat156]

Hi All,

It's planetary nebula time, so many to chose from at this time of year.

Here's NGC 6563 in Sagittarius.

LRGB image, 60, 30, 30, 30 minutes in 10 minute subs for the luminance and 5 minute subs for the colour.

Larger, slightly cropped image at http://tinyurl.com/22ofvoz

Enjoy.

Cheers
Stuart

Added repro as suggested by Marc, the big version looks much better, go see it!

[allan gould]

Very nice stars and colours. Great shot.

[Hagar (Doug)]

Now that is tiny Stuart, Great colour in the well resolved PN and lovely round and colourful stars.
Nice image.

[TrevorW]

That's a wee one, maybe drop star colour back a bit as slightly unrealistic (too deep) and selectively highten the colour and sharpness in the PN, personal preference

[Paul Haese]

I really like this. Nice tight round stars and in amongst them is the small splash of colour. Superb.

[bratislav (Bratislav)]

Great effort, Stuart. Make sure you submit it to the next (color) issue of Crux! It is going to be tough to get a spot in there, I can already see that ...

Bratislav

[rat156]

Thanks for the encouragement.

I really like the (slightly unrealistic) star colours, it's the first pic I've taken where the stars have intense colouration I'm leaving it alone.

I think that the next issue of Crux should be a cracker, I've already submitted two images, I'm not sure if Peter will take another one...

And, I'm not doing the setting out, so I have no preferential treatment this time.

Cheers
Stuart

[multiweb (Marc)]

Love the details in the planetary but the data is a little clipped in the stars, that's why they have this pastel color and look a bit flat. Excellent guiding though and nice shot.

[rat156]

Hi Marc,

OK I'll admit, I'm in the habit of clipping the background a bit to remove left over LP.

Thanks for pointing it out, I've adjusted the image accordingly.

One thing I've noticed is that the conversion from 16 to 8 bit (to save as jpeg) clips the background a bit.

Here's the Sidonio and the histogram from the 16 and 8 bit images.

Cheers
Stuart

[Lester]

Very nice image Stuart. Thanks for the view.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by rat156

One thing I've noticed is that the conversion from 16 to 8 bit (to save as jpeg) clips the background a bit.

Yes stars can take a hit when you're trying to bring the faint stuff out. Both ways, you can clip the highlights which is obvious and easy to avoid (burnt out) but when you stretch your histograms it's easy to kill some of the sample within the stars dynamic range and you flatten the picture. I'm having some issues with this in two shots I've been trying to process this week. Here's your shot with the stars isolated and boosted then blended back in at 50%. It's subtle but you can tell they look like light sources now although retaining some color.

[rat156]

Ahh, now I get it, you mean that the stars have no "shape" to them. Agreed, will fix. I guess I got carried away with Noel's actions...

Never had to bother too much with the stars in my pictures before, just goes to show you that you can always learn something new.

Cheers
Stuart