IC 342

[Cheman]

Here is my latest attempt with Startools. http://astrob.in/61365/ This is was a tough target for me. For those of you on the south end, this would be one of the brighter galaxies in the norther sky if it wasnt obscured by the milky way dust and stuff.

[admin]

You got some nice detail in there, but something seems to have gone awry with the colors? It's virtually devoid of color other than looking very yellow...
Could you post your workflow?

[Cheman]

Hi Ivo
I processed this at work on my work computer(shhhh dont tell anyone!!). It looked a bit more colorful on that computer!!! although I cut the color back because at first I thought the colors were too strong, too yellow/orange. I think thats one of the reasons this galaxy is tough, its got a colorcast I think from the milkyway dust maybe. At any rate my workflow is at work so I dont have it now. Here is dropbox link to data if you want to see that https://www.dropbox.com/s/05istryf7bay1dz/IC%20342.FTS
Che

[admin]

Wow... I'm blown away by that data - very nice!
This is what some *very* basic steps yield;
I did an AutoDev to see what we have, I binned to 50%, cropped the stacking artifacts.
Then did a Wipe with the Vignetting preset and [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [2 pixels]. I created a mask to keep Wipe from sampling the center.
Final stretch was an AutoDev with ROI over the galaxy, Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [3.2 pixels] and Parameter [Outside ROI Influence] set to [12 %]
Final Color calibration with default values
I saved it straight to JPEG, nothing else done, not even noise reduction, because it just wanted to get to a 'correct' color image as soon as possible to show you what's in there.

IC 342.jpg (594.96 KiB) Viewed 9184 times

What you're seeing here is a good continuum of star temperatures, a yellow core (correct - older stars) and some predominantly purple HII regions scattered about the galaxy. Fantastic colors!

[Cheman]

Ivo
all I can say is WOW, I have a lot to learn!!!!. I would love to see what you could do if you spent some time on this!!! I will try to work on this some more tomorrow (at work.....ssssshhhhhhh!!LOL

Che, who worships humbly at your feet

[Cheman]

Ivo
I noticed on my image when processing and on yours as well, that some of the stars seem to be one color on one side of the star and another color on the other side of the same star. Is this a result of slight miscollomation of my scope, or coma or what, do you know?
Che

[admin]

Che, who worships humbly at your feet

"Stand up humble StarTools user, and go forth and mulitply!"

[admin]

Ivo
I noticed on my image when processing and on yours as well, that some of the stars seem to be one color on one side of the star and another color on the other side of the same star. Is this a result of slight miscollomation of my scope, or coma or what, do you know?
Che

It appears it is a channel misalignment issue. Not sure what causes it, but DSS seems to do that a lot...

[Cheman]

Oh, maybe I'll try a more time consuming stacking program.. I have Nebulosity, when I have more time I'll try that and see if its better.
Thanks
che

[Cheman]

IC-342-ivo.jpg (391.78 KiB) Viewed 9175 times

I tried a quick redo, all seemed ok until I got to the color module. If i used default (true color constancy) the image came out way to orangish. I swithche to other software detail aware and this is what I came up with. Have not tried to fix stars or anything else yet, but did stop tracking and noise reduction. Also, how do you save direct to jpeg, I can only seem to save to tiff???