Maybe the Start of Something Good

[Mike Lewis]

So my remote astro session 4 is now in the books, with gear packed away safely and my friend in AZ getting set to travel back here to CO for the summer. It was an interesting session, with a one image already posted here (Rosette Nebula, probably my favorite I have done to date) and a few more still awaiting processing (widefield NGC4565, Seahorse Nebula/Fireworks Galaxy mosaic, North America Nebula) as well as IC1318, The Butterfly Nebula, which I am posting a preliminary Hα image from here. This was from a recent experiment where I started taking much longer subs to expose for the nebula and did not worry about the star exposure, since I typically remove the narrowband stars anyway and replace them with RGB stars using shorter sub exposure lengths. In this case I also positioned my camera to avoid the very bright star Sadr (Gamma Cygni) that is just out of the frame on the lower right in this image. This is NOT fully processed, as I have a little more data I took the last night to add to it, plus I skipped a bunch of my usual noise reduction typically performed on the data prior to stretching. I took only Hα and RGB data on this one, so the intention will be to do some sort of a natural light color mix with the Hα added in as either additional red or perhaps as a luminance style layer. Using just Hα-RGB will also be a first for me, so we will see how that goes.

So here is 3 hours and 50 mins worth of 10 minute subframes in Hα on this target, producing what I think is looking like a promising start. I will obviously update this post (or start a new one) at whatever point I am finished processing what I have for this target. Comments and critiques always welcome.

ML

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Fabulous image Mike. The astro stuff is just amazing.

 

[AlanLichty]

Maybe not the final result yet but this sure is a nice teaser. I like the level of detail in the nebula.

 

[JimFox]

This is very promising Mike! I think this will be a great one.

It's nice to see some of these preliminary processes as I find it quite educational.

 

[chuckp]

Mike, great start. It should come out good with Ha and rgb using Ha for the Lum channel. Try it several different ways, that would be the best thing to do.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Great start Mike, looking foreword to more.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Mike, great start. It should come out good with Ha and rgb using Ha for the Lum channel. Try it several different ways, that would be the best thing to do.

Chuck, thanks for the comments and the advice. I will be trying it multiple ways I'm sure. In fact, if you ask @JimFox (who is always asking me to post more stuff in the astro forum) I try EVERY one of my astro images too many ways before I finish them! But in this case, being something I have not really done before I do plan to fiddle around with this a bit until I hopefully get something I like.

 

[JimFox]

Chuck, thanks for the comments and the advice. I will be trying it multiple ways I'm sure. In fact, if you ask @JimFox (who is always asking me to post more stuff in the astro forum) I try EVERY one of my astro images too many ways before I finish them! But in this case, being something I have not really done before I do plan to fiddle around with this a bit until I hopefully get something I like.

Hmmm.... so this means that you actually should be posting each of your captures with 3 or 4 different versions?

Just saying....

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Chuck, thanks for the comments and the advice. I will be trying it multiple ways I'm sure. In fact, if you ask @JimFox (who is always asking me to post more stuff in the astro forum) I try EVERY one of my astro images too many ways before I finish them! But in this case, being something I have not really done before I do plan to fiddle around with this a bit until I hopefully get something I like.

I can't wait to see this in full color image, Mike.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hmmm.... so this means that you actually should be posting each of your captures with 3 or 4 different versions?

Just saying....

I realize you are half kidding and half serious.

Well, I post the version(s) that work out, typically not all the ones that don't look very good. In astro, it is possible to get wildly different results with different approaches to post processing, all while using the same data set. It is of course all very subjective, but I try to get the best I can out of my data before I consider the processing to be finished.

 

[Gramps Potter]

So my remote astro session 4 is now in the books, with gear packed away safely and my friend in AZ getting set to travel back here to CO for the summer. It was an interesting session, with a one image already posted here (Rosette Nebula, probably my favorite I have done to date) and a few more still awaiting processing (widefield NGC4565, Seahorse Nebula/Fireworks Galaxy mosaic, North America Nebula) as well as IC1318, The Butterfly Nebula, which I am posting a preliminary Hα image from here. This was from a recent experiment where I started taking much longer subs to expose for the nebula and did not worry about the star exposure, since I typically remove the narrowband stars anyway and replace them with RGB stars using shorter sub exposure lengths. In this case I also positioned my camera to avoid the very bright star Sadr (Gamma Cygni) that is just out of the frame on the lower right in this image. This is NOT fully processed, as I have a little more data I took the last night to add to it, plus I skipped a bunch of my usual noise reduction typically performed on the data prior to stretching. I took only Hα and RGB data on this one, so the intention will be to do some sort of a natural light color mix with the Hα added in as either additional red or perhaps as a luminance style layer. Using just Hα-RGB will also be a first for me, so we will see how that goes.

So here is 3 hours and 50 mins worth of 10 minute subframes in Hα on this target, producing what I think is looking like a promising start. I will obviously update this post (or start a new one) at whatever point I am finished processing what I have for this target. Comments and critiques always welcome.

View attachment 39712


ML

Looking forward to seeing your final !!