M42 region mosaic

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

My first ever mosaic - at least one with more than just two frames.

Not such a large region covered for a mosaic, as with a GSO RC8 and a QHY8, my field of view is fairly narrow.

Couple that with a few dumb errors in orienting and positioning the field of view between sessions due to poor planning, and what's left is only 18M pixels shown out of 36M taken with 6 frames over 5 different sessions in December and January. (e.g. one frame was just to fill in a tiny sliver missed between two other frames!!)

All 20 minute exposures. I think 57 of them in total spread across the 6 frames. Put together in PixInsight and then processed in PI + some Photoshop.

Full res available on Astrobin here.

Looking at it at 100%, I've definitely oversharpened the proverbial out of the dust lanes in the middle. However, viewed at a reasonable size, it looks ok. Wasn't sure what was best to do here. In the end, I went for what looks good for the image viewed so it fits full screen - and to anyone who views it at 100% I apologise . Advice appreciated.

Thanks for looking.

Paul

[batema (Mark)]

I think that is a great mosaic. Very seemless and colours look great.

[IanP]

Good shot, Paul

The core seems to be a little bit overblown, I’d try HDRMultiscaleTransform with Range+StarMask.
If you want to quickly try without mask, start with 6 layers, and check ToLightness and Deringering ..

[astronobob (Bob)]

Looks you have blended the frames together nicely Paul, , the whole image has good color and depth too.
The 100% scaled imaged is showing the same stuff I have produced at times, recollecting I had de-noised a lot more than necessary and when came time to sharpen, there wasn't a good amount of detail left to sharpen, Lol

Not sure if this corresponds tho,, just looks similar ?
I do like your image at full screen level tho, real nice job there

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Originally Posted by batema

I think that is a great mosaic. Very seemless and colours look great.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by IanP

Good shot, Paul

Thanks.

Originally Posted by IanP

The core seems to be a little bit overblown, I’d try HDRMultiscaleTransform with Range+StarMask.
If you want to quickly try without mask, start with 6 layers, and check ToLightness and Deringering ..

I merged in a stack of a few 60 second shots to try to mitigate the core brightness, but, yes, I agree it still seems a bit much. I might try the HDRMultiscale you suggest on those 60 second shots before merging. Trying it after the merge seemed to lead to an awful mess.

Originally Posted by astronobob

Looks you have blended the frames together nicely Paul,

Thanks. I take no credit though. It was the GradientMerge tool in PixInsight - and a nice tutorial I found somewhere on how to use it well for more than two frames, which was puzzling me. The trick seemed to be to do it a rough one with the old (StarAlignment) tool and then use that to align the images for the new tool!

Originally Posted by astronobob

The 100% scaled imaged is showing the same stuff I have produced at times, recollecting I had de-noised a lot more than necessary and when came time to sharpen, there wasn't a good amount of detail left to sharpen, Lol
Not sure if this corresponds tho,, just looks similar ?
I do like your image at full screen level tho, real nice job there

Yes, another member has suggested offline it could be worth a bit more gentle reprocess. I might give that a go.

[John K]

That's awesome - really like the colour and the sharpened dust lanes which in fact create a real 3D feel.

As others have said, if you reduce the intensity of the core it could be a different interpretation, but I really like it even with the core like that as the sharpened lanes create depth, including the star spikes which once again create a galactic 3D feel.

[DiscoDuck (Paul)]

Originally Posted by John K

That's awesome - really like the colour and the sharpened dust lanes which in fact create a real 3D feel.

As others have said, if you reduce the intensity of the core it could be a different interpretation, but I really like it even with the core like that as the sharpened lanes create depth, including the star spikes which once again create a galactic 3D feel.

Thanks John.

Actually, just uploaded a new version with the 60 second images merged into the core HDRd beforehand. Not sure which I prefer. (Also went a tad less maniacal on the sharpening!).

http://www.astrobin.com/236264/B/