Given the rather constant cloud cover and a few months without a camera, I've fallen into continuous reprocessing of old data. I think I've done a good job on this one, Its kind of hard to say with the colour blindness and all, but it looks pretty smooth to me..
First image is the previously posted image, second is the repro..
Details:
8hrs Ha (24x 1800sec exposures) 5hrs 40mins (53x 300sec) OSC data from dark skies.
Ha captured over 3 nights, OSC captured over 3 nights about 4 weeks later..
8x 300s Darks, 8x 1800s darks. no flats used.
Equipment used : TMB/LOMO 80mm F/6 triplet, Baader MPCC, Baader 7nm Ha filter, Orion StarShoot Pro, WO ZS70ED + QHY5 for guiding. HEQ5 Pro.
Eek - I think you might need the colour saturation somewhere in the middle of the two as well Alex. I'm still voting Mark I - its really captured the stars well even if M20 and M8 could use just a bit more colour depth.
Heck - its hard to ace a repro when the original was so good to start with you know
Gone to far have I? Eek.. I kind of thought the saturation might be too high, as to me it looked vibrant... Vibrant to me is usually "Technicolor" to everyone else! hahaha
Ah grasshopper do not rush like a swollen river to find your repro quest, reap slowly and be guided by the colours in your mind not your eye, move like a ripple getting ever larger, little steps...are?.. worth two in the bush?..?.....
luckily you clarified that at the end there Mike, otherwise I would have thought two things...
1 - You've lost your mind..
2 - What the hell is that guy talking about
I suppose rather than attempting to change the colour, the object of this repro was to try and increase the contrast between the bright and dark areas of the background stars... I think in the first, the background stars are lacking in colour a bit, and the darker dust lanes seem a little muted.. I was trying to add punch to it a bit.. giving it a bit more dynamic range I suppose..
I'll have another go at it.. aiming for the same colours, with the contrast enhancements.. Well see how I go..
Thanks Doug, Im wondering if its worth going and getting my eyes re-tested... I've done some pretty shocking things with colours before, But I dont believe I've messed up this bad in the past... Maybe the colourblindness is getting worse?
No 1 is my vote Alex, like Humayun mentions, the repro looks like a old Fuji film astro shot from the 80`s. I reckon a blend of the new repro into the original (minus the saturation) should give a very pleasing result!
Gary - Funny you should say that, I've got them both opened in photoshop at the moment, Im trying to get the same depth and contrast from the repro in the original without touching the colour...
I had a go at combining the two versions and then some and the data isn't good enough to imrpove it I don't think, I found I was just going around in circles, when you lift the contrast you lose the naturaual look. You have some unmatched bits betwen data sets too - top left and bottom right.
The Ha and the OSC data don't line up Perfectly, that is present in the top left and bottom right... Yea, I've moved on to processing up a few data sets I got of the web... M8 and M20 can wait until I can acquire a decent set of data next year..
JJJ... You know me soooo well... Sleepy eyes and processing do not go together.. (at least its not like that pink M20 that I did up at 10 chain hill a few months back... that was my worst processing effort ever I think.. hahaha!
Dave - Yea, I've given up on it... (well, sort of.. I have another one in the works...) but I think increasing the contrast any amount causes the image to go a bit pair shaped...
Sorry Alex i had a go at it (man a jpeg is a pain in the %#^@ to process).
Ok here it is what i have done: First select-color range and select only the neb and the blue from the triffid.
Then hue/saturation (red and blue seperate).
Then astronomy tools and do the local contrast enhancement.
Hope it is ok as i kinda suck at processing.
hahaha
...
- burnt out core bits
