M 17 Swan Nebula Final Process

[batema (Mark)]

Hi,

I was waiting to get some colour data but have at this stage given that away as a joke even though I have taken it.

I am trying to layer the colour shot on top of the Hydrogen alpha but took the RGB the next night and the camera was taken out and put back in a slightly different possition so I have given up trying to manually align them in photoshop. Probably an easy way to do it but I don't know how.

Anyway I am happy with the Ha. 18 x 10 Min 1x1 binning with darks applied. Taken with W/O Flt 110 and guided with PHD and photoshop cs3.

Any feedback welcome.

Mark

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by batema

Hi,

I was waiting to get some colour data but have at this stage given that away as a joke even though I have taken it.

I am trying to layer the colour shot on top of the Hydrogen alpha but took the RGB the next night and the camera was taken out and put back in a slightly different possition so I have given up trying to manually align them in photoshop. Probably an easy way to do it but I don't know how.

Anyway I am happy with the Ha. 18 x 10 Min 1x1 binning with darks applied. Taken with W/O Flt 110 and guided with PHD and photoshop cs3.

Any feedback welcome.

Mark

Nice Ha shot Mark. You can try to use the Ha channel as a lum and blend the normal color again on top as a soft light blend then tweak colors to taste to give it a bit of punch. That should give you something to start from. Use your stacking program but don't use photoshop to register anything. Not accurate enough. It's best used for blending and colour balance only. Registar is good, CCDStack, maxim DL, IRIS, PixInsight, to many to name ... the choice is yours.

[gregbradley]

Your Ha shot turned out veyr well.

Did you use the transform function in photoshop? Control T and then you can move the top image around in any direction and it will also respond to the arrow keys on the keyboard as well. Hit enter when happy with the alignment.

Best to set the ha layer to "lighten" so you can see the layer below it and also best to use navigator to zoom in on the image once you've got the rough alignment done.

I use CCDstack for alignments though. I align the HaLRGB masters together in one go and then resave them to keep their alignment.

Greg.

[TrevorW]

Nice one mark

[starfinder (Russ)]

Wow! Lots of detail there.

Like Greg I use CCDStack to align all the images and save separately. I can't wait to see your colour version!

[astroron (Ron)]

I am not out to offend anyone, but I think that all these images of M17 that are going deeper and using various filters are nothing but Nebulosity, The shape of the Swan, Omega, ect has completely disappeared .
This is happening to a lot of other objects, they bear no resemblance to what they look like through a telescope
It may be great astro imaging but I think you cannot see the wood for the trees.
I suppose if you take long enough exposures you will find the sky is full of nebulosity
I for one am not impressed with the way things are proceeding
My Rant for the day