StarTools

Hi All,

I am feeling very much out of my depth. I have a modified 500d and a Ha clip in filter. I am trying to work out the best way to combine both sets of data but after reading so many things I think I have lost myself in a sea of information.

I have included a link to both the Ha and RGB file. But really looking for a easy guide to follow to get me started with this.

Thanks

Mark.

Eagle Nebula:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwFGXz ... sp=sharing Ha data.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwFGXz ... sp=sharing RGB data.

Hi,

There are many ways of combining narrow and wide-band data, but most StarTools users' favourite (including mine) is the technique described here;

In a nutshell, it consists of creating a weighted, synthetic luminance frame from all data you collected. This luminance frame then becomes the "detail" data set which is processed separately.
The colour data (RGB only) is then lightly processed separately as well, upon which detail and color frames are combined using the Layer module.
This achieves the best of both worlds - better detail from the narrow-band enhanced set and "correct" visual spectrum colours from the RGB set.

See also this thread.

Hope this helps!

Hi, I just had a look at your data as well and it appears the data has been possibly stretched and color balanced.
Can you tell us how you stacked this? Did you use DSS by any chance? If so did you use the settings as shown here and did you make sure to embed rather than apply and stretching?

Furthermore, the two sets do not appear to be aligned. You can align the sets by using one set as a reference frame for the other when stacking.

Finally, I do have to ask why you would acquire solely Ha with a DSLR, unless being able to have RGB and Ha separately is absolutely paramount? (for example if you are a stickler for visual-spectrum colors). Wouldn't it be a better use of valuable exposure time to just acquire full-spectrum data (which indeed lobs Ha+R together in the red channel which may/may not be a problem depending on your goals)?