My Feeble Horsehead

[peeb61 (Paul)]

Hi Everyone,
Attached is my Horsehead effort. I need a lot more data but I think its a start.

Using Canon350D at prime focus with ED80 using a Orion Broadband DKF and piggybacked on my LX200.

6 x 10min at 800iso, 1 x 12min at 800iso.

Stacked with DSS and processed in CS3 with no noise reduction.
Image cropped and resized.

Please feel free to comment and thanks for looking.

Paul

[rogerg (Roger)]

Very good start! I ran an auto-levels on it in photoshop, which surprisingly (rarely happens) brought it up much nicer, I think. Stars are quite round, flame and horsehead easily visible, nice colour, not too bad on noise.... all adds up to be a pretty good attempt

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

I am wondering why there is some noise here given the exposure time?

[peeb61 (Paul)]

Originally Posted by rogerg

Very good start! I ran an auto-levels on it in photoshop, which surprisingly (rarely happens) brought it up much nicer, I think. Stars are quite round, flame and horsehead easily visible, nice colour, not too bad on noise.... all adds up to be a pretty good attempt

Thanks Roger, I've done as you said and it has come up nice so I have posted it here, just wait for some more clear weather to add to this image.

Originally Posted by CoolhandJo

I am wondering why there is some noise here given the exposure time?

I don't know Dr Paul, maybe the ambient temperature had a bit to do with it as the camera is not cooled, I have much better results in winter. The outside temperature on the night was around 24deg as opposed to as low as 6deg in the winter months.

Paul

[TrevorW]

Not bad !!!

[gregbradley]

Hi Paul,

There is a lot more in this image than you realise.

I have done some processing on it and am happy to
show it if you want.

Greg.

[peeb61 (Paul)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Hi Paul,

There is a lot more in this image than you realise.

I have done some processing on it and am happy to
show it if you want.

Greg.

Give it to me Greg.....give it to me!
Or I can send you a larger image which would be great.

[gregbradley]

That's funny Paul

http://www.pbase.com/image/108368456

What did I do?

1. Levels and curves (your primary processing tools, you bring up the image using curves and you move the black point over to the right to it just meets the bell shaped curve to get rid of noise and you repeat this over and over until the image is bright and you aren't getting any improvement).

2. Noise Ninja. It smoothed out the background and got rid of residual noise.

3. Minimum filter on Alnitak. A bit of smudge tool nudging Alnitak a bit rounder.

4. Sponge tool set to desaturate 5% and rubbed it on the blue halo around Alnitak.

5. Minimum filter on a few of the brighter stars -1 pixel and lassoed them first with feather 5 pixels.

6. Curves run separately on red, green and blue to accentuate the red and pull back the lower part of the curve to pullback the darker background where most of the noise lies.

7. Noel Carboni reduce space noise action.

8. Sponge tool set to saturate 5% and rubbed it on the red areas.

9. Selective sharpening - duplicate layer/set to overlay, then filter/other/high pass 3.5 pixels then layer/layer mask/hide all then rub with brush set to white on the horsehead itself only and the flame nebula only.
Layer/Flatten image.

That was about it.

Total time taken - 6 or 7 minutes.

Greg.

[peeb61 (Paul)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

That's funny Paul

http://www.pbase.com/image/108368456

What did I do?

1. Levels and curves (your primary processing tools, you bring up the image using curves and you move the black point over to the right to it just meets the bell shaped curve to get rid of noise and you repeat this over and over until the image is bright and you aren't getting any improvement).

2. Noise Ninja. It smoothed out the background and got rid of residual noise.

3. Minimum filter on Alnitak. A bit of smudge tool nudging Alnitak a bit rounder.

4. Sponge tool set to desaturate 5% and rubbed it on the blue halo around Alnitak.

5. Minimum filter on a few of the brighter stars -1 pixel and lassoed them first with feather 5 pixels.

6. Curves run separately on red, green and blue to accentuate the red and pull back the lower part of the curve to pullback the darker background where most of the noise lies.

7. Noel Carboni reduce space noise action.

8. Sponge tool set to saturate 5% and rubbed it on the red areas.

9. Selective sharpening - duplicate layer/set to overlay, then filter/other/high pass 3.5 pixels then layer/layer mask/hide all then rub with brush set to white on the horsehead itself only and the flame nebula only.
Layer/Flatten image.

That was about it.

Total time taken - 6 or 7 minutes.

Greg.

Yeeez what a difference Greg! I've tried Noiseware but this just turned it into a cartoon.

Thanks for the tutorial I will copy and paste it, I'm sure there will be more imagers out there who will benefit from this.

Thanks Greg.

[Tilt (Michael)]

Originally Posted by peeb61

I don't know Dr Paul, maybe the ambient temperature had a bit to do with it as the camera is not cooled, I have much better results in winter. The outside temperature on the night was around 24deg as opposed to as low as 6deg in the winter months.

Agreed, roll on winter for us that use DSLRs, the temp drops below 0 usually on winter nights here and imaging with the 350D I've found that makes a big difference.

Nice pic btw, I must try this target as well.

Michael

[anthony.tony]

Nice Shot ,The other's Show us what you can do if you know how to process an image This is helping me learn.

[Ric]

Well done Paul that's a great image with a lot of good data in it as Greg has showed.

Thanks Greg for that mini tutorial, I found it quite useful as well.

Cheers

[renormalised (Carl)]

Nice piccie, Paul...and great tute there, Greg

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by peeb61

Yeeez what a difference Greg! I've tried Noiseware but this just turned it into a cartoon.

Thanks for the tutorial I will copy and paste it, I'm there will be more imagers out there who will benefit from this.

Thanks Greg.

You're welcome.

Greg.