Eta and the Homunculus

[Paul Haese]

I think I have imaged this object at least 12 times over the years. I never have really liked any of the images I have produced of the area. It's a really tough customer. I feel that I either consign myself to producing a purely natural colour image or produce an image using all the bandwidths available to me. The hard part is getting all the colours to look right. I really do like the Hubble Palette but it does tend to pushed heavily toward the greens due to the mapping involved. I wonder this time if I have produced something more subtle with all the band passes looking right and nothing is overwhelming any other bandpass.

The image contains all the usual suspects including the Homunculus, Misty Mountains, Fickle Finger and much more.

Click link below for the larger image.
http://paulhaese.net/NGC3372AG12.html

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

A lovely looking central Carina Nebula image that Paul, I think the colours and brightness settled on work very nicely. Until the advent of the recent Russ Croman tools and plugins, that have changed the game a tad in image processing, I have been pretty good at picking the filters used on an image but it's a new era now... so, the look of this image suggests to me BlurExterminator was used, am I correct?

Mike

[Joshua Bunn (Joshua)]

Top shelf image, Paul. Looking very 3D.

[Dennis]

A lovely celestial scene Paul, it invokes those mystical feelings you might experience whilst visiting the Sistine Chapel.

Cheers

Dennis

[Dave882 (David)]

Utterly astounding Paul. I just spent a while at high zoom just taking in the detail. Wow

[alpal]

Hi Paul,
a superb image - your best so far.
It is impossible to know if those wonderful stars are real
or if you have used BlurXTerminator ?

Any improvement?
Maybe a local contrast adjustment using curves on
the brighter areas as all around the keyhole
and other brighter areas, look a little washed out.
It would have to be done with a very careful blurred layer mask.

cheers
Allan

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys for the comments. Much appreciated.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

A lovely looking central Carina Nebula image that Paul, I think the colours and brightness settled on work very nicely. Until the advent of the recent Russ Croman tools and plugins, that have changed the game a tad in image processing, I have been pretty good at picking the filters used on an image but it's a new era now... so, the look of this image suggests to me BlurExterminator was used, am I correct?

Mike

Thanks Mike. There is some very slight use of Blur Ext in the image. I prefer to use it mainly for minor sharpening. We have had a good patch of seeing for the last month of so and as a result most of the NB data is exceptional to start with and with some slight shapenning it really pops. I still mostly work in Photoshop but have taken to do star removal prior to any sharpening I do in photoshop these days.

Originally Posted by Dennis

A lovely celestial scene Paul, it invokes those mystical feelings you might experience whilst visiting the Sistine Chapel.

Cheers

Dennis

Thanks Dennis. I like this palette as I think in some ways a natural colour palette just lacks something in this object. It all tends to have the same look to it and the detail appears to get lost in the red and magenta tones. Not many nebula really have a good look with the Ha mapped to green but this one works I think.

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Paul,
a superb image - your best so far.
It is impossible to know if those wonderful stars are real
or if you have used BlurXTerminator ?

Any improvement?
Maybe a local contrast adjustment using curves on
the brighter areas as all around the keyhole
and other brighter areas, look a little washed out.
It would have to be done with a very careful blurred layer mask.

cheers
Allan

Thanks Allan. These stars are really what we get out there at Swan Reach Imaging. I removed the stars prior to sharpening and we get these tight little stars without the need to reshape them. It's a good rig for doing this sort of work and ideal for subscriptions.

I have done a little work on the core area but am mindful that these areas appear quite bright, perhaps washed out a little. I tend to use masking for nearly ever step of my processing so have already done some toning down of the core brightness. I'll take another look tonight and see if it needs a little more.

[matlud (Mathew)]

Just great Paul, really like where you ended up with the palette 👍
Cheers, Mat