StarTools

(except for the bright star - it looked awful when I tried to add color)
Having had to buy a new computer sucked in many ways, but moving up 12 years worth of cpu and gpu tech and going from 16GB to 64GB RAM makes for a huge improvement in ST - it's nice to not have to baby my way through svd hoping to not crash while adding samples!

AT65EDQ, Risingcam 571c
14 hours L-Ultimate 3nm duoband
2 hours uv-ir cut

Played around with various approaches, I think I have settled on this version (for today!). Processed at 50% bin level. 16-bit optidev for both files, for the duoband I squashed the shadows down to 25% in both optidev and contrast. No sharpen, no ss.

Suggestions about ways to do things differently always welcome!

Hi
Nice to this area of the sky without the current stars-processed-to-death-or-removed trend prevalent elsewhere;)
Excellent shot. Love it.

Quite a colorfull shot. Very nice and much detail in it.

Trouble with the L-enhance, extreme and ultima, the dualband filters is indeed starcolor. One should shoot a separate RGB for the starcolor. My Austrian shot has thesame problem.

Hi Ron,

very good image IMHO. I also think that you did an extremely good job on the star field. As Al already noted many recent images of the Veil have brutally reduced stars. Two years ago I struggled finding the right balance in order to highlight the nebula but not removing the star field too much so it still looks as being located in the milky way disc. I think you succeeded there.

Pickering's triangle looks great. After my semi successfull attempt at the Western Veil I postponed that target. Maybe I should give it a try next year.

Sorry I can't suggest anything to do differently, but it's just such a nice image.

Regards
Stefan

Good grief I think I'm 6+ pages behind on all the "new" posts; I'll never catch back up! But had to log in to give congrats on this fine image.

One of my favorite targets, and which I never manage to get right myself. Leaving most or all of the starfield is also right down my alley. That really gives the image life and, to me, makes it so much more realistic, even though of course this is all processed astrophotography with all our tricks employed.

The RGB stars are nicely done too. Probably a lot milder than I would have done, but that could be a good thing. Lots of stars, hints of proper color, but still allowing the main target to get due attention.

All except 52 Cyg, which can be a terror in the best of cases. It is a little too bad it is bleached out from all its orange-red goodness.

Because it is so prominent a feature, it could possibly be amenable to an extra, custom, manually-masked layering of its RGB data, at the same mild level as all the other RGB stars, to get the right hue. With sufficient fuzz and as long as it doesn't muck up the nearby filaments. That would strike me as more corrective touch-up (because otherwise it doesn't match the color schemes of this RGB-duo mashup) than being concerning as mask painting or whatever.

Sweet pic nonetheless.

Hey, Mike's back!

Wow - thanks for all the nice words, everyone!

The OSC data are way weird in terms of old-52. Saturated at the core, of course, but any sort of regular sampling gives a blue-dominant near-core ring.
Why? Beats me. Something about non-linear sensor response at the high end. (I have no clue, but I figure that sentence alone will make me look smart)

Anyways, I tweaked the colors just to make 52 more normal-looking for its 1.05-ish B-V, then did the paint-by-numbers (oops - "touch-up") mask for just the star. That looks like this: