NGC 7380 and surroundings

[fmeireso]

Hi guys,

My first SHO...to be blunt i kinda like it, but still i am very unsure about it. It is a child from ST and PI. i went throught the whole flow in Startools but it came out rather green and stars too blue. So seperated stars and nebulae and adjusted the colors for a better fit and diminished the stars a bit. Yet i think i still have no blue OIII enough. I do like the surroundings, on the left upper corner there seems to be kind of dark nebulae, looks like a lizard. There is also alot of dust round the Wizard itself . Stars look right imho, and no magenta ones, Startools solves that pretty well.

It is 1:06 h of HA, 03:36 of SII and 04:00 hr of OIII , taken with an Touptek mono cam. Scope was an Askar FRA 500, of course nice for the surroundings but i think i maybe should have used my 130 mm ...

What do you guys think?

CroppedWizardGimpV2 (Large).jpg (581.78 KiB) Viewed 11251 times

[Mike in Rancho]

Congrats on your first SHO, Freddy!

I think I recall this target, but I'd have to go rummaging through my files. Might have been a CN challenge though who knows what equipment I had at the time.

I can't help with the whole star removal thing, but did you let ST balance the channels full mask when going into Color? Every target is different and OIII may be weak here, but generally I see most SHO's balancing out as no bias reduction of SII, some reduction of OIII (believe it or not), and significant reduction of Ha. Depending on the matrix mapping you choose (try out several to get a feel for them), this can give a classic-like SHO hue arrangement, golden brown Ha often tinged with the red of SII, and sufficient blue still for the OIII.

And it often takes some real playing with the three saturation controls to reveal the OIII more strongly. Also you can experiment with returning the style to Scientific to see if that pops the OIII better.

Good job on that dark nebula structure!

Personally, I would also take more Ha integration here. Remember that is the strongest channel and your best bet for creating a good, high SNR, synthetic luminance in Compose. Sure it makes sense to take extra SII and OIII as those are going to be the noisiest channels and weakest requiring the most stretch, but 1 hour Ha won't cut it. And if you left the Compose channel exposure times as-is in 1.9, you are also weighting much more strongly to the noisier SII and OIII.

Finally remember that the Compose exposure sliders are really meant to get us to the best overall SNR synthetic L, and while straight up times work well with LRGB, they may not necessarily properly reflect SNR when it comes to NB SHO. So think of your Synth L in terms of SNR and adjust (or take more integration) accordingly.

[fmeireso]

Thanks Mike,

Yes i used full mask in the color module but indeed i forgot a bit the different matrix mappings. Still i think the data has a lot of potential, getting in out is a challenge. I did not had the chance to take more Ha because of the weather, i only got about 11 subs of 6 minutes due to the bad weather; Since it came out rather well i decide to move on to OIII and yesterday SII. both sessions went alot better.
I am toying with the idea to get another session of Ha data, maybe 2 or 3 ,hours but anyhow the Ha is strong in this one compared to OIII en SII.

Best thing now is redo it , and play a bit with the different matrixes

CS
Freddy

[decay]

generally I see most SHO's balancing out as no bias reduction of Ha, some reduction of OIII (believe it or not), and significant reduction of Ha.

The first 'Ha' was probably meant to be 'SII', Mike?

[decay]

Hi Freddy,

congratulations to your first mono / NB / SHO image! There’s already a great depth in it, and that with still limited Ha integration time. I’m sure this is the way to go for you under light polluted skies at your location. Let us know, how you go on with this image, I’m looking forward to a new version with extended Ha integration time! Hopefully there will be some clear skies for us next time ...

There is one thing which strikes me: There seems to be some sort of grain/noise/mottling all over your image. I can see this on my notebook and on my smartphone as well:

2023-12-22 16_48_03-Window.jpg (30.18 KiB) Viewed 8753 times

Do you see that, too? That looks strange to me, I’ve no idea what’s causing it. Some kind of correlated noise? Grain size is much too large to be normal shot/Poisson noise. Is this already visible after stacking or does it happen later during processing?

Best regards, Dietmar.

[Mike in Rancho]

The first 'Ha' was probably meant to be 'SII', Mike?

Oops. Good catch! Went back and edited that boo boo.

Also good catch on those defects. I didn't see that first time around looking on my tablet. It almost looks like a sponge, and different than the mottling that can occur from low SNR via SS or DN in ST.

Freddy did you employ any kind of star removal here?

We could be looking at the DSO redistribution system. SXT turns stars into black holes, BXT turns galaxies into stars...

[dx_ron]

We could be looking at the DSO redistribution system. SXT turns stars into black holes, BXT turns galaxies into stars...

The new version of BXT turns all stars into actual gemstones!

[fmeireso]

The first 'Ha' was probably meant to be 'SII', Mike?

Freddy did you employ any kind of star removal here?

We could be looking at the DSO redistribution system. SXT turns stars into black holes, BXT turns galaxies into stars...

Yes, i guess i did, allthough i honestly don't know what i did and what not.
Moreover , afterwards i got more different colors (better) in using a different matrix , so a bit more blue, as you proposed.
But then i turned to the dark side
i processed it in PI. At got a great result...much to my surprise,since this SHO is completely new to me.
This said, it was not entirly processed in PI. If i am not mistaken i still used deconvulation in Startools.
Lately i am really experimenting (due to the bad weather i guess) and my new 'creations ' tend to be hybrids of some kind. Sometimes i got nice results from older stacks running them through Startools and tweaking them with tools out of PI, it varies alot.

I am really enjoying it...the more i dig into AP the more excited i get...

[fmeireso]

Do you see that, too? That looks strange to me, I’ve no idea what’s causing it. Some kind of correlated noise? Grain size is much too large to be normal shot/Poisson noise. Is this already visible after stacking or does it happen later during processing?

Best regards, Dietmar.

I guess it comes from starremoval. I have seen that before, it is like little holes that pop up.

Dunno, starremoval seems to me always a kind of balancing act. Too much kills the image, still in overcluttered images by stars i feel i just got to do it to express the nebule more. I found many pictures on the internet with an overcluttered starimage , obscuring the Wizard....

Lately i am starting to split the image in a starless image and a star image , and work on them separatly, and combine them afterwards, sometimes with good results, and well sometimes less good result. The layer module in ST is an interesting feature for that and really works well. You can do this in PI too via Pixelmath...

[Stefan B]

I like your most recent rendition on astrobin, Freddy.

When you are using star removal you are probably doing that in PI, right? Is that on linear data or already stretched? Can you then process in ST with tracking on?

Regards
Stefan