Heart and Soul

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DavidWright2010

Well-Known Member
After the bright objects are captured, there are a whole lot of dimmer ones to attempt. For me, it's been a struggle, esp. from my Bortle 5-6 backyard.

Case in point, the Heart and Soul Nebulae. 114 subs of 30 sec, Nikon D5600a, 85 mm. Includes the Double Cluster on the right:

Heart and Soulst114w16.jpg


Another, same camera but 177 subs at 200 mm

Heart and Soul.H20.jpg


You can see that background gradients are a big problem. I am currently using GraXpert.
David
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Hey David,

The Heart and Soul are such cool nebula! I like what you have going on in this. Our progression in our captures is part of the fun I think.

Astro Pixel Processor is an inexpensive program that removes gradients well. When I finally took the jump from only using Photoshop to process my Astro images I checked APP out, it's fine. But I did check out Pixinsight also with their 45 day trial. And I found it so powerful and pretty easy to use. It's well worth the $250 or whatever the cost was. I did that I think 3 months ago.

If you use Photoshop, there is a set of Astro actions you can get, and the best part of the actions is a Star Reducer action. It works great. I would run it 3 to 6 times in a row until I got the look I wanted. It really helped it so that the stars didn't dominate so much and at the same time it pulled the nebulas out from the background more. The stars have a real way of hiding the objects we want to see. I think if your stars were reduced some the Heart and Soul would pop even more.

The last suggestion is to use the L-Pro filter by Optolong. It also helps reduce the stars some, it helps with the light pollution, and it doesn't really affect your exposure much since it's a broad band filter. If you move up to more aggressive filters that are Narrow Band, then you will have to take longer subs as they block more light.

What tracker are you using?
 
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DavidWright2010

Well-Known Member
In my backyard I have the portable (ha!) EQ6-R Pro. For travel I have a Fornax LightTrak II.

I'm heading up to my dark sky site (Olympic Peninsula, WA) for a few weeks. A friend up there says that Hurricane Ridge (5200') is the place to go, but it got that name for a reason, and I'm thinking there must be a lower elevation with less wind. Where I stay is at sea level.

I guess I should look at Pixinsight again. I got the demo maybe a year ago, and gave up pretty quickly. But I hear good things, and I've certainly spent plenty on hardware.

David
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Really nice set, botyh the wider view and the more tightly cropped version. Hurricane Ridge is likely a nice location in many ways, but as you say, wind might be an issue, although I do not recall how windy it was the time I was up there late in the day shooting scenic images.

ML
 
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