M45 Project

[pmrid (Peter)]

This has always fascinated me - because of the swirling winds of reflection nebulae seemingly running in opposing directions. I am looking at ways to process up the detail of these sweeping clouds but there seems to be a price in the core of the brighter stars. This is mainly HDR processing with a touch of High Pass filter as well.

Any suggestion about how to avoid that traffic-light effect in the bright stars welcome. This is just Luminance at this stage (12x10 minutes).

Peter

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Swirls are good!

[RickS (Rick)]

Looks like a great start, Peter!

Originally Posted by pmrid

Any suggestion about how to avoid that traffic-light effect in the bright stars welcome.

Process in PixInsight and use MaskedStretch

Cheers,
Rick.

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

Originally Posted by pmrid

Any suggestion about how to avoid that traffic-light effect in the bright stars welcome.
Peter

Using a Star Mask in PI to protect the stars prior to stretching and other processing would help. It is also possible to create a star mask in Photoshop but I can't recall the tool to do this automatically for all stars. I maybe feasible to select all of the bright stars though with the magic wand tool and use the selection to create a layer mask. In any case, it is also important to feather the mask to avoid harsh boarders between the star and the surrounding halos/nebulosity.

[gregbradley]

Nice shot Peter.

You can use shorter subs. Correct exposure is always better than post processing.

You can use the shadows highlight tool. The masking prior to stretching sounds like a good way as long as the selection is properly feathered otherwise it will create rings.

Greg.

[ozstronomer (Geoff)]

Lots of nice nebulosity there Peter.

Well done

[Ross G]

You have captured some great looking detail Pete.

Good luck with it.

Ross.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Love it. Terrific details. Such a difficult object to image up close. Those big blue pesky stars.

[pmrid (Peter)]

Thank you all for your kind remarks and helpful advice.

As a result I have gone chasing more out of the data and here is the result.
Now for some colour.

Peter

[RobF (Rob)]

Will be interesting to see the final LRGB Peter.
Has been some great weather over the last week or so - good to see you're making good use of it!

[astronobob (Bob)]

Very nice dust collecting Peter, , Looking forward to the color
This is a target Ive been requested to do in the coming month or two. hence I ask what F/Length did you use on this ? Im going for 400mm, wider field to pick up some surrounding dark sky ? your view at a guess about 700mm ?
Rgds

[pmrid (Peter)]

Originally Posted by astronobob

Very nice dust collecting Peter, , Looking forward to the color
This is a target Ive been requested to do in the coming month or two. hence I ask what F/Length did you use on this ? Im going for 400mm, wider field to pick up some surrounding dark sky ? your view at a guess about 700mm ?
Rgds

Yes Bob. A bit under that. I was using an ED127 with an AP CCDT67 reducer so I was at about 625mm. I'd have liked to go a little wider myself but....
Peter

[astronobob (Bob)]

Cheers mate I would like to collect as much faint dust you have - very nice deep image from you so far.
i did this back in 2007/8 with the ED80, only learning with the 400D slr and no PS back then or real proccessing except 'noise ninja' and a little bit levels in canon software, Lol.
10min single exposure, hand paddle guided with a small 12v tv screen woth double crosshairs drawn on with black marker and a bodgey'd up surveillance video camera on a 50mm refractor, 2x barlow piggybacked with duct-tape
I sould try a repro for processing comparison sake ?
Thanx for reply

[Shiraz (Ray)]

looking good peter - will be great with added colour