Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Repro!

[gregbradley]

I have been trying to take this image now for about a year. It started out with an SBig STL11 and FSQ and it looked nice in a few luminance images but then the dreaded clouds moved in. This happened several times over the course of a year.

So Friday night, great seeing, clear skies, man I must have won the lottery!

Tak BRC250, Apogee U16M again.

LRGB 90 50 50 50. Minimal processing.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/116221266

Greg.

[mill (Martin)]

Greg that is a cracker of an image, very nice and smooth with perfect colours
Very nice

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Very smooth, excellent, but wow, what a difference to this

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/102416400

What happened there?

[leon]

Nice one Greg, I just love this area of the night sky.

Leon

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Bassnut

Very smooth, excellent, but wow, what a difference to this

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/102416400

What happened there?

The image you linked was taken with an FSQ106ED with the
F3.64 reducer making approx 330mm focal length and the Apogee U16M so that is absolute
maximum widefield with a telescope. The one I have just taken
is at 1268mm focal length and the U16M so the image scale is
much more zoomed in so it is only part of the whole nebula
complex.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by mill

Greg that is a cracker of an image, very nice and smooth with perfect colours
Very nice

Thanks for that. I am glad you liked it.

Originally Posted by leon

Nice one Greg, I just love this area of the night sky.

Leon

Thanks Leon. Its one of my favourites too.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

The image you linked was taken with an FSQ106ED with the
F3.64 reducer making approx 330mm focal length and the Apogee U16M so that is absolute
maximum widefield with a telescope. The one I have just taken
is at 1268mm focal length and the U16M so the image scale is
much more zoomed in so it is only part of the whole nebula
complex.

Yes, I understand that, but the colour balance is completely different. I like em both though Greg .

[renormalised (Carl)]

These images are works of art, and scientifically interesting at the same time. As all images should be...Great work, Greg

[pmrid (Peter)]

Fabulous. I particularly like the wispy smokey quality you have captured here with such delightful detail.
Peter

[Craig_L]

Wow! Yes, a work of art. Should be in a gallery. Very mysterious, subtle colours and lots of detail.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Your handling of the processing on this one is interesting Greg. The dust looks sensational but the colours look just a bit sort of dirty and unatural to me but man what a vista, as I said in a previous post, this is where the BRC shines

Nice work

Mike

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by renormalised

These images are works of art, and scientifically interesting at the same time. As all images should be...Great work, Greg

Thanks for that.

Originally Posted by pmrid

Fabulous. I particularly like the wispy smokey quality you have captured here with such delightful detail.
Peter

The BRC really picks up a lot of detail on bright objects.

Originally Posted by Craig_L

Wow! Yes, a work of art. Should be in a gallery. Very mysterious, subtle colours and lots of detail.

Wow, quite a compliment - thanks.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Your handling of the processing on this one is interesting Greg. The dust looks sensational but the colours look just a bit sort of dirty and unatural to me but man what a vista, as I said in a previous post, this is where the BRC shines

Nice work

Mike

I rechecked the colour combine of this as the blue wasn't what I expected either. I redid it and the colour is richer and more natural now. I needed to renormalise the RGB before combine. I find
I often have to do that. I never had to with Astrodon filters but with others I do otherwise I can get unusual colour. Thanks for picking it up.

Greg

Cheers

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by Bassnut

Yes, I understand that, but the colour balance is completely different. I like em both though Greg .

You're right Fred, I needed to renormalise the RGB before combining. I need to do that sometimes and other times not really. Astrodons were good in that regard.

I've redone the image.

Greg.

[multiweb (Marc)]

That is just a great shot Greg! I just love it, colors, composition, processing. Top shelf stuff

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by multiweb

That is just a great shot Greg! I just love it, colors, composition, processing. Top shelf stuff

Thanks Marc!

[beren]

Impressive image Greg congrats......I've tried my amateurish hand at this area of sky so many times too only to be jinked with cloud appearing from nowhere

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by beren

Impressive image Greg congrats......I've tried my amateurish hand at this area of sky so many times too only to be jinked with cloud appearing from nowhere

Thanks Beren.

Yeah clouds and rain etc are one of the barriers to this game.
One aspect of my site that is almost amusing is it can be totally overcast, I go inside and watch a DVD and come out every now and then to check. I see totally clear skies. I setup my gear to run and then
wonder why all of a sudden the autoguider stopped and look up to see fully clouded skies again. I call them sucker holes in the cloud. They suck me in every time!

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

You're right Fred, I needed to renormalise the RGB before combining. I need to do that sometimes and other times not really. Astrodons were good in that regard.

I've redone the image.

Greg.

The repro is much nicer but Greg, you should never normalise your R, G & B data! Normalising is really only meant to be done for mono subs within each channel, not across channels. If you do it between the R,G, and B components you may normalise a part of the image that is supposed to have a colour differential - pretty certain for this subject. The effect will be to subdue or remove colour in parts of the image. You should combine the RG & B as is and subsequently adjust any colour imbalance.

Cheers, Marcus

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

The repro is much nicer but Greg, you should never normalise your R, G & B data! Normalising is really only meant to be done for mono subs within each channel, not across channels. If you do it between the R,G, and B components you may normalise a part of the image that is supposed to have a colour differential - pretty certain for this subject. The effect will be to subdue or remove colour in parts of the image. You should combine the RG & B as is and subsequently adjust any colour imbalance.

Cheers, Marcus

Thanks Marcus.
Yes I can see that, normalise puts the values in an image into the same range and as you point out different colours would have different values in some areas of the image where a particular colour is stronger than the others.

I instead used auto on DDP in CCDstack to make the subs more the same range for each channel. Then I did combine. This works pretty well although it may be better to manually do the DDP and set it to where they all look about the same brightness as auto can black clip a tad.

I redid the image and the colours came out better again.

So its a repro of a repro! Same link.

http://jjd.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/116221266/large

Greg.

[Tom Davis (Tom)]

Very pretty; I too love this area! I'd like to see some more detail in Barnard objects; yours are very dark. They have some amazingly delicate structures if you can bring them out.

Tom