I've managed to get some more data of the Prawn Nebula the other weekend from Leyburn and combined it with the frames I captured in September.
15 x 5 min 1600 ISO from the 7th of September
12 x 5 min 1600 ISO from the 4th of October
WO 110 Megrez, 0.8x flattener/reducer (~f5), 524mm fl, Modded Canon 450D,
stacked and processed in PixInsight and Photoshop CS5.
Got a heap more detail from the nebula, but I'm not overjoyed with the star colours.
Your right, great looking gas, but the slightly harder ball like stuff does seem a bit behind in the quality stakes. I have only played a little bit with OSC but find it a bit harder to get the star colours looking right.
This is just a guess and only a guess, but maybe it is the anti-blooming combined with the bayer matrix that causes limited difference in pixel values, which makes it more difficult to bring out the colour in more photon saturated parts of the image. I played with some very short exposures on my DSLR a little while ago and got mixed results, but the colours of the stars were easier to process.
Colour balance is a science and an art, and I'm still trying to figure out the best solution, but in PI under ColourCalibration-->BackgroundNeutralization and ColourCalibration are the tools I use to get a basic balance.
I know it isn't the most scientific adjustment, but once you go non linear science has taken the back seat and you are processing for the human eye, which does colour balancing a similar way.
I had exactly the same telescope as you and I found I only started getting good star colours when I moved up from a modded Canon like yours to an OSC ccd.
Great work Tony, I dig all the Neb is this, goes right through the image, very ballanced and the leading brighter edges are very well defined
Good show ! !
