A quick Elephant Trunk

[Mike in Rancho]

For as well-known as it is, this was my first time ever pointing at this target. Two nights, though the first was mostly a test of some tuning I did on the HEQ5 Pro, for a total of only 4 hours, fairly evenly split between S H and O.

Even with the added integration of the second night, which helped quite a bit, I still re-weighted the channels in compose to favor the Ha, having the best SNR of the features. After that just your routine ST workflow. No shrink, no SS, I went straight to DN after Color. There are a lot of stars here, and at least in SHO, I don't think they detracted but instead impressively showed what a busy patch of sky this is.

I don't know if I'll rack up more time on this to make it cleaner (it's the August target), but I'm reasonably happy with the mere 4 hours. Reprocessing is always possible.

Mapping was 50SII 50Ha, 50Ha 50OIII, 100OIII. Ha bias reduce was 3.42 and OIII bias reduce 1.76.

The file size is still pretty large even after Gimp resampling to 1600 wide and jpg export at 92% quality. I tried that also in ST, using bin and saving out a jpg, but didn't like the changes that made to the image. So, due to size just linking through to the CN gallery host. Once I get around to finalizing this (if I even change things) I'll ultimately get it to astrobin.

[Stefan B]

Looks really good, Mike! Although it is also a great broadband target the results in SHO are awesome. If doing it myself I would have overprocessed, of course, with Shrink, SuperStructure and what not. But your result with a more subtle approach is really appealing.

Your star colors are very nice, especially for SHO stars. Or are they RGB and layered in?

Regards
Stefan

[Mike in Rancho]

Looks really good, Mike! Although it is also a great broadband target the results in SHO are awesome. If doing it myself I would have overprocessed, of course, with Shrink, SuperStructure and what not. But your result with a more subtle approach is really appealing.

Your star colors are very nice, especially for SHO stars. Or are they RGB and layered in?

Regards
Stefan

Thanks, Stefan!

Interesting that you consider it subtle. Though I can see that I think. I actually didn't hold back too much. OptiDev was no ROI, Contrast I just reduced locality to 25%, HDR reduced Tame to 1.12, Sharpen was default other than touching up the mask to get all bright stars, SVD was 10 samples and I only changed UNKNOWN (I mean Deringing Fuzz lol) to 35%. Then in Color, along with the mapping and throttling already described, I actually set saturation to 350% (!), bright sat to 5.0, and dark sat to 3.5. Oh and cap purple remained on at 100%. Who would ever think 350% sat was subtle?

The final tweak after DN was just a FilmDev to alter gamma to 95% and with a 4.0 pixel DAF, giving a very mild push to the background and enhancing some color contrast.

No RGB stars, this is just straight SHO, but I also thought they looked totally fine using this matrix and the purple cap.

[Stefan B]

Hi Mike,

well, what I meant was that your processing workflow was subtle, not necessarily the result. Minimalist approach might be a better word...don't judge me, I'm not a native speaker

Or differently put, I like that you tried not to do too much to the data in terms of contrast, shrinking or emphasizing super structures etc. (all the things I just can't let go of when I process stuff ).

Yes, the image is quite colorful and saturated but I saw a lot crazier rainbow trunks. Two years or so ago it appeared like a challenge which trunk is more colorful...

Anyway, great result!

SVD was 10 samples and I only changed UNKNOWN (I mean Deringing Fuzz lol) to 35%.

No RGB stars, this is just straight SHO, but I also thought they looked totally fine using this matrix and the purple cap.

Yes, they really are. I am not a big fan of SHO stars, especially when they are still purple (I know you are basically fine with them). But they are colorful and not uniform. Don't know if that's a bug or a feature, but they LOOK great

Regards
Stefan

[decay]

Great image, Mike!

I only changed UNKNOWN (I mean Deringing Fuzz

What do you mean? Or do I miss a joke? Or is there a resolution depended glitch etc.? For me it looks fine:

2023-08-23 06_52_36-.jpg (9.09 KiB) Viewed 58637 times

As said, please do report such glitches. There are still some few things to clean up after implementing multi language support. A short bug report or mail to Ivo would be fine, I think.

Best regards, Dietmar.

[Mike in Rancho]

Yes Dietmar, it was merely another of my jokes.

As is often the case, it probably went over like a lead balloon. Or would that be luftballon?

(I only know that because of Nena)

Anyway, I'm a heavy user of the ST logs, and some settings still show up there with UNKNOWN as a placeholder in 1.9. This is one of them. Not worthy of a bug report. All just part of eventual final clean-up that Ivo certainly knows about.

[decay]

it was merely another of my jokes

Yeah Mike, I figured it was a joke. But I didn't know what you were talking about. Yepp, not worthy a bug report, but I guess it helps to know that this shows up in the ST logs. And I'm not sure if Ivo reads all of our small talk here that detailed

(I only know that because of Nena)

Dear Lord Yes, I was afraid that that's the most present fact about Germany known is the US ... But nevertheless, she was the dream of many male teenagers in the 80s. Funny: She is from a larger city next to my hometown, only about 15 km away from me!

Best regards, Dietmar.

[Mike in Rancho]

I never added to this or changed it, but did upload the full size image to astrobin. A bit grainy, but all I'm going to get for it this month.

https://astrob.in/hhn3ej/0/

Despite being SHO, I still think this turned out to be one of my favorite star fields. Just so many and so sharp. Yay for SVD.

I think they look really good on 4K at the "full" resolution, at least if the OS isn't upscaling it. That tends to show the noise and graininess a bit more (my Windows display settings are normally at 150% with this monitor).

[fmeireso]

Looks a nice Elephant trunk to me, Mike...
Yesterday evening i processed one from another user on CN. The outcome in SHO sure resembles youre picture.

I have mixed feelings about this object. In most cases it does not really appeal to me but in other cases when i like the color outcome , like thisone, i get the opposite feeling..

Since i have to test my Touptek, i am considering this object as a testcase, not really to try to get a great image, but just to test..it seems a big object, so i will be using my 61 mm EDPH which should be just good for the framing.
I am unsure how bright it is. Does it need a lot of integration time?

CS
Freddy

[Mike in Rancho]

I agree, Freddy!

I was never a fan of this target, it just didn't seem very photogenic. I think I still feel that way about broadband renditions. But for SHO it seems it can come out reasonably attractive.

I would not consider it to be super bright, even though the numbers on Stellarium make one think it is. Ha structure was fine, but not outstanding, in a 5 minute mono sub at f/3.8 585mm. OIII and SII were weak, but there once stacked. I believe I managed a "good enough" image out of 4 hours total.

But I am unsure how broadband will pan out. Darker skies than mine will help!