The Heart of the Heart

[whixson]

I reprocessed the Heart Nebula images I took last summer using ST and I attached the jpg. I'm somewhat happy, but it seems the stars are exaggerated and the colors also seem unbalanced. When I put a mask on the stars and did a shrink/grow it also seemed to 'square' the brighter stars.[

attachment=0]Heart2012.jpg[/attachment]

Ivo, I opened the log file you mentioned but this is all it contained

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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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[admin]

I reprocessed the Heart Nebula images I took last summer using ST and I attached the jpg. I'm somewhat happy, but it seems the stars are exaggerated

Actually, I have to disagree on that! The stars look close to perfect to me with nice pin-point cores (where data existed), instead of the white overexposed circles some beginners end up with (typically when they mindlessly clip their white point). The halos are to be expected, depending on your scope (they are most likely the diffraction pattern / Airy disk of your refractor). That said, if you;re not a fan of the halos, you could try the Tighten Algorithm in the Magic module on just these stars. To push back the star field and make the nebula pop a bit more (totally depends on your taste), you could run the Isolate preset in the Life module (with a 'standard' all-pixels-on mask).

and the colors also seem unbalanced.

Did you use the Color module as the last step before switching off Tracking to balance the colors? If nothing modified the color from CCD->stacked data, then perfect color reconstruction should definitely be possible!

When I put a mask on the stars and did a shrink/grow it also seemed to 'square' the brighter stars.

Could you attach an example of your mask and the resulting image if this is still an issue?? It's true that a square looking mask may introduce some squareness when the paramters are pushed hard.

Ivo, I opened the log file you mentioned but this is all it contained
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StarTools 1.3.3.224
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Hmmm... smells like a bug...
What operating system are you using?

[whixson]

Ivo, Windows 7 64-bit. I will re-do the image and make sure I do the color just before turning tracking off and denoise

[admin]

Ivo, Windows 7 64-bit.e

Thanks for that I fixed the problem in the latest alpha version (see download section).