Antares Rho Ophiuchus with StarTools

[Rowland]

I have reprocessed the 1st of only two serious images for 2012.

Original image .fit.

Modules used were;

Develop (98%), Wipe (defaults), Develop (stretch as is, home in) Wipe (improved contrast), HDR Reveal, Colour saturate only, Life (Isolate, with inverted star mask), Tracking off and noise reduction.

I am enjoying StarTools, but still find I'm not using it to it's fullest extent.

Regards,

Rowland.

[gboulton]

What a gorgeous image, Rowland! Thanks for sharing that!

Just keep plugging away with ST...it begins to make more and more sense as you learn how it thinks.

Jim Misti at Misti Mountain has lots of unstretched data to play with, and you can search by TIFs on astrobin as well. Lots of practice material for those cloudy days.

[admin]

That a very nice repro Rowland - you even managed to get some faint hints of the red in the upper left corner this time!
I like the subtle colouring as well.
Was there any use in applying Decon to your data?

By the way, I still look at your 'Tail of Scorpio' from time to time - love it!

[Rowland]

Thanks Gordon. This image has seen many renditions and since posting above, tweaked things a little more. Contrast and teasing out detail with the HDR module. Particularly the complex filigree of dust near Rho Oph. I would also like to accentuate the blue reflection nebula. In terms of gradient ST does a superb job, but I need to learn how to isolate with a mask and saturate without affecting the entire image.
I know Jim Misti's site. It's a great resource. I think what Ivo did with my other image of 2012, Eta Carina, was superb and superior to other software I have used. So much so, that I replaced the astrobin image with the ST rendition.

Rowland.

[Rowland]

Thanks Ivo. I think we crossed paths. Yes, getting there with colour, and lots of variation in colour and features with this image to experiment.

Rowland.

[admin]

To accentuate the reflection nebula, you could run the optimize preset in the HDR module until you're happy with the way it's isolated/accentuated, then you could create a large area mask around the reflection nebula and blend it in with the original image (if you don't wish the rest of the image to be affected by the HDR module). You'd do that with the Layer module, 'Undo>Bg' (copies the original to the background) and set Mask Fuzz to something big to create a smooth blend.

[Rowland]

Thanks Ivo. I will work on that. The tail of scorpio was a surprise given the equipment. Thanks for the reminder, I had intended using the data for a Tracker/StarTools basic imaging tutorial.