StarTools

Here's one night worth of the California Nebulae. What do you all think of the color balance with the Canon 60Da? Zinfadel? I had a bit of trouble getting wine rings around the stars in the nebulae till I figured out how to use Mask Fuzz in the Color Module.

Hi Starry
thats actually more like the color I was TRYING to get on my California But then I decided I liked my color as well (because thats the way it came out )

Charmain,interesting color observation. I see that the camera you use has good Ha response. My 60Da has some but by no means a full response. yet our Nebulae color match pretty closely.
I had an earlier effort where I made it more red. It was done a month ago in hazy conditions but came out pretty luridly ugly. I did use the Layer Module on this one.

[[/URL]URL=http://astrob.in/133809/0/]


One question I have about the QHY8 OSC camera you use is the ringing halo effect around the brighter stars in your image. Is that caused by the optical window on the camera or something else? Also did you bin your shot? Mine is binned 4x4, but then my pixels are ~ half the size of yours.

Starry Eyes wrote: One question I have about the QHY8 OSC camera you use is the ringing halo effect around the brighter stars in your image. Is that caused by the optical window on the camera or something else? Also did you bin your shot? Mine is binned 4x4, but then my pixels are ~ half the size of yours.

You know, I'm really not sure. that camera has been thru hell and highwater. Dropped so many times I cant count. Opened up and cleaned many times. It's almost ten years old, IIRC. Could be the optical glass in front of the sensor is not in the greatest condition. I may open it again and remove the glass and see the difference. I'm not sure if that glass has a coating of some kind on it or not.
I've always thought the halo would be caused by the optical train somewhere, and the ringing introduced in the processing, trying to reduce the halo. Being a OSC, the only binning has been done in Startools, not in capture. I usually bin 71.
Che

Your camera might behave similar to mine. I've seen that halo effect pretty prominently on the old style glass plate photos where the light bounces around internally between the parallel surfaces. Course I do it with mirrors. I'd do that remove filter plate experiment when the dew temp is below the sensor temp.. or...snow storm!

I've had a thought... Hey it happens sometime. I wonder how the near infrared quanta are assigned color in the visible spectrum that we see on the monitor or printed. This Nebulae has a lot of H beta emission to it. One thing I would like to improve is a way to perhaps spread the color spectra of strong emission objects. Then perhaps a more pastel transparent effect would be possible. I've noticed the same effect on the Cocoon Nebulae where it gets too opaque for my taste. I suppose one way means lots of expensive filters ditto on CCD cameras and a way more complicated work flow. But if there was a way to spread out the spectrum a bit ...Hey Ivo, any thoughts, or am I all wet on this one? I have tried out the layer separation a bit, maybe try again?

Starry Eyes wrote:I've had a thought... Hey it happens sometime. I wonder how the near infrared quanta are assigned color in the visible spectrum that we see on the monitor or printed. This Nebulae has a lot of H beta emission to it. One thing I would like to improve is a way to perhaps spread the color spectra of strong emission objects. Then perhaps a more pastel transparent effect would be possible. I've noticed the same effect on the Cocoon Nebulae where it gets too opaque for my taste. I suppose one way means lots of expensive filters ditto on CCD cameras and a way more complicated work flow. But if there was a way to spread out the spectrum a bit ...Hey Ivo, any thoughts, or am I all wet on this one? I have tried out the layer separation a bit, maybe try again?

Hey,

I'm not entirely sure what you're after with regards to 'spreading out the spectrum'. Do you mean adding detail from alternative bands (such as Ha, Hb, OIII, S2, N2 etc.) to visible sprectrum data?