StarTools

Hi all,

it seems, Ron and I had the same idea and so here is my shot of the Veil. Of course, I do not own such a fine wide field refractor scope and hence I headed for the Triangle this time.


Processing was not easy for me, I think I produced thousands of versions . Unlike Ron, I decided to push back the star field somewhat stronger and therefore I used Shrink and SuperStructure modules. Usually and if possible I try to avoid this, but in this case is was necessary in my opinion. The small stars are a problem as they already get crashed down to pixel size when using SV Decon. But SV Decon did a great job on the nebula structures ... I did a second run of the SuperStructure module in order to saturate the colours. I think this mitigates the 'bleaching' of the bright filaments, but I'm not sure. Oh and yes, I did it again After processing in StarTools, I reduced contrast and increased brightness a little bit. The background does not look that harsh and somewhat easier to the eye. Maybe ...

Nonetheless I hope I found a balance in bringing out the nebuala without 'processing-the-stars-to death' to much like Carles put it

This was the first time I layered in some RGB stars. The brighter stars are bleeding far into their surroundings. Yeah, 'painting-by-numbers' helped to bring out the halos in RGB in this cases. I'm not sure about all this ...

Technical details: https://astrob.in/i513vv/0/

Comments welcome, as always.

Dietmar.

Wow, that's a real stunner, Dietmar A like a lot about this image. Details are good, colors have a cool glow to them and in my eyes the star field is well managed. Maybe I am biased since the stars would probably have looked exactly like that if I would have processed that data set.

Any reason for collecting duo NB data with two different sub exposure lengths? I get the different ISO settings with the DSLR, they are the same as the ones I used for broadband and duo NB. But combining different exposure times is at least not recommended.

decay wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2024 5:34 pm This was the first time I layered in some RGB stars. The brighter stars are bleeding far into their surroundings.

I think the blending looks very good. Bleeding into surroundings shouldn't be a problem if the star mask is done on the final small (deconvolved and shrinked) stars from the duo NB image. Then the surroundings should be excluded from layering (except maybe for a bit of mask fuzz). If the star mask was done on the broadband stars (maybe neither deconvolved nor shrinked) it's a different matter. But I'd try to avoid that.

Anyway, awesome result.

Regards
Stefan

Totally agree with Stefan, it is a real winner! Just beautifull.

Stars in that area are a real issue. On my Austrian veil i did not use any stars reduction, in stead i used starnet at a linear stage and stretched the separate images different, and afterwards combined them again. In that case it worked out.

There were some many stars i could not get it right in Startools in the shrink module..

Thank you, Freddy!

fmeireso wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2024 6:47 pm Stars in that area are a real issue. On my Austrian veil ...

Absolutely. I saw your nice shot from your Austria vacation and I wonder if it is even more of an issue with wide field shots. More stars in the FOV and probably a less advantageous pixel scale?

My (teenage) daughter was on vacation in Austria too and she told us that the Milky Way was visible from side to side without any dark adaption of the eyes. Just like you described. Unbelievable.

Best regards, Dietmar.

Thank you Stefan. Yes, this time most things worked as desired

Stefan B wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2024 5:59 pm Any reason for collecting duo NB data with two different sub exposure lengths? I get the different ISO settings with the DSLR, they are the same as the ones I used for broadband and duo NB. But combining different exposure times is at least not recommended.

Oh yes, there is a reason The first night I started with 240 s subs but when I checked them the day after I saw that the red channel nearly clipped at the left side of the histogram. That's why I took 300 s subs the other nights. In the past 240 s have been fine, but this time the sky was somehow darker I guess.

Best regards, Dietmar.

Really nice, Dietmar! I'm sure you'll have that 16-panel mosaic of the full Loop ready soon (right?). I think the stars look pretty good. When I layer in the rgb, I usually use a star mask made from the narrow-band image. That helps keep the color from bleeding out too much into the surroundings, but it can take some fiddling with the mask for some stars, and fiddling with the Mask Fuzz value. You can also invert the star mask and use Undo, if the Layering introduces too much global change.

dx_ron wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 9:14 pm I'm sure you'll have that 16-panel mosaic of the full Loop ready soon (right?).

Sure, Ron - excellent idea! A quick estimation and calculation based on the clear nights over the past 12 month ... wait ... yes ... I guess this will be StarTools release 47. Roughly.