True Colour Great Carina Nebula

[dylan_odonnell (Dylan)]

Hi all,

First post to the "real" board and not the beginner section (gulp). I've seen some amazingly better versions of this target posted here and couldn't quite reach that level with this data.

This is 2.2 hours of 180s exposures over 2 nights using my 9.25" SCT Telescope / Hyperstar 3 / + QHY12 One Shot Colour CCD camera. In processing this, I've tried to draw out the details with respect to the natural colour of this MASSIVE southern hemisphere nebula. The blue/orange stars are not individually enhanced, and their distinct hues are the measure I use to judge the accuracy of the colour across the rest of the object.

d

[Rex]

Beautiful wide field of view Dylan. Nicely presented Eta.

[jase (Jason)]

beginners tip, monitor the image's histogram closely throughout the entire data manipulation process. In this case, you've lost data in the shadows (black clipped) resulting in a high contrast look between the sky background and midtones.

[dylan_odonnell (Dylan)]

Originally Posted by jase

beginners tip, monitor the image's histogram closely throughout the entire data manipulation process. In this case, you've lost data in the shadows (black clipped) resulting in a high contrast look between the sky background and midtones.

Thanks Jase, that's a great piece of advice. I've been hovering my cursor over the black occasionally to see the RGB levels so I knew it had clipped to 0 on R and G already, but pushed it a little for dramatic effect.