NGC2070 Tarantula Nebula

[joshman (Josh)]

This has always been one of the hardest targets for me to process. I think it was mostly due to the really intricate and busy nebulosity. The exceptionally strong OIII signal can also be quite overpowering when combining channels.

But I think with the skills and techniques I've learnt in Pixinsight, I've finally been able to produce an image that I'm reasonably happy with. This was mostly captured as a fill-in target at the end of the night, so I was limited with framing options. I might capture this target again later in the season with a better orientation and maybe a wider field as well.

See it real big on Astrobin here.

The capture details are on the Astrobin Page; for processing, a fairly standard workflow:

Stars:
LinearFit > ChannelCombination > SPCC > StarX > Stars Stretched in GHS
NB:
LinearFit > mild BlurX(non-stellar only) > StarX > NoiseX > GHS > ChannelCombination > NarrowbandNormalisation > CurvesTransformation

PixelMath to bring the stars back, BlurX to reduce star-size.

C&C welcome, I'm always looking to improve!

Thanks for looking and Clear Skies!

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Hi Josh,
Nice colours but it's my opinion that you've compressed the dynamic range too much by making the core too dark. it's meant to be the brightest part of the LMC.

CS
Andy

[joshman (Josh)]

Originally Posted by Andy01

Hi Josh,
Nice colours but it's my opinion that you've compressed the dynamic range too much by making the core too dark. it's meant to be the brightest part of the LMC.

CS
Andy

Thanks Andy, I can definitely see that. It's probably the most common issue I find with my processing, and somethign i'll need to pay more attention to.

I was probably overly cautious of not blowing out all the detail in that incredible core.

[TrevorW]

Astrobin image is amazing really brought out a lot of finer detail, couloirs maybe a bit clipped looking at the histogram but otherwise impressive

[joshman (Josh)]

Originally Posted by TrevorW

Astrobin image is amazing really brought out a lot of finer detail, couloirs maybe a bit clipped looking at the histogram but otherwise impressive

Thanks Trevor! I'll have to look into it. I couldn't see anything clipped when looking around the image in PixInsight. I wonder if the Jpeg compression has played hookey with it?

[TrevorW]

Clipped sorry thats probably wrong word to use

[gregbradley]

A nice Tarantula but what Andy said seems to be the main issue. It could show a wider range of dark areas and bright areas.

Greg.

[joshman (Josh)]

Thanks for the input everyone, it seems like I need to work on the overall image contrast a bit more.


I've had another run at it, and hopefully it's a little more pleasing, though in retrospect i think i might have swung the image in the opposite direction.



You can see it big on Astrobin.