M8 and M20

[Martin Pugh]

I see Bert posted his as 'Lagoon and Triffid', but mine has colour!

http://www.martinpughastrophotograph...IIILRGB-V3.jpg

I added some OIII to this image, but you know, I think the impact was to add too much magenta to M8. Elsewhere, it looks fine.
Overall, this was LRGB of 4:2:2:2 hours, Ha was about 90 minutes and OIII about an hour.

thanks for looking.

Martin

[gregbradley]

Eegads its upside down! I had to stand on my hands to look at it!

Nice shot Martin. It lacks a bit of intensity and depth though. Background star colours look quite good which is the usual battle for this area.

Greg.

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

Lovely vista, Martin. So many great objects in one image. Beautiful nebula colours and the star fields look very natural.

[alpal]

That's a great wide field shot Martin.

[Craig_L]

Great shot Martin - beautiful detail. My only quibbles would be the composition and perhaps a slight increase in the brightness of the highlights - centre of M8 and some of the larger stars...the smaller ones are fine (maybe it's my monitor). A difficult widefield subject well done.

[DJT (David)]

Hi Martin

A really lovely shot. What rig did you use for this? I had no idea there was such a large star field out there.

[dvj (John)]

Your stars are also exremely sharp to the corners. The FSQ is the winner. Finest astrograph ever made.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Very nice Result Martin

Mike

[Stevec35 (Steve)]

A beautiful result Martin

Cheers

Steve

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

I think that's a mightly fine view, beatifully processed and very natural looking. Congratulations Martin, well done.

[marco (Marco Lorenzi)]

Nice Martin, in particular the overall color balance. Framing is a bit tight on one side, perhaps you had to crop the square chip of 16803 for some reasons?

Clear skies
Marco

[Paul Haese]

Huge field of view. Heaps of dust lanes and little tiny nodules of detail. Very nice overall. Maybe more golden stars showing through would just top it off.

[Peter Ward]

In the words of Richie Benaud ....Marvellous !

[desler]

Just wonderful, I'd be very happy to produce something as nice as this. Really inspirational Martin!

Darren

[peeb61 (Paul)]

Martin,
Nice work...another jaw lock!

Paul

[Octane (Humayun)]

Oh, my!

H

[Martin Pugh]

Hello and thanks for the great feedback.
Marco - this is the STL11K, not the STX, so no cropping was had, just tight framing as you say.

I think everyone knows how difficult this area is to get right - such a huge dynamic range - and you will never please everybody!.

My goals have always been (for every image) to:
Not oversaturate
Not over sharpen
Make it natural
Reveal detail.

Anyone who has imaged this area knows that M8 in particular is super bright so steps have to be taken to reveal the centre (and even now I have blown out the Hourglass).

The Ha emission is also in abundance, and when I blended that layer, the opacity had to go down to 15%, otherwise it overtook the image.

Rambling on here - but, to finish off - I wanted to show stars, star clusters, nebulosity, details in the M8 and M20, while at least trying to get the colour right. A Photoshop 'Action' will not do that.

As always, thanks for the critique - I do not mind at all!

clear skies.
Martin

[RobF (Rob)]

I've swimming around in this image for 20mins, and just wanted to say thanks for sharing Martin. The contrasting blue fringes on some of the Ha is just wonderful, perhaps due to the extra Ha and OIII.

[TheDecepticon]

Very nice Martin. Great field of view.
I think I have to agree with Paul Haese about the golden stars.

[LightningNZ (Cam)]

That's really lovely Martin. It's got the slightly soft-tones look of the old "deep" film shots of this region. Nice to see such a pretty field when so many go for "punch" in their images.

Thanks for posting. I have a new wallpaper.

Cam