I am not happy with this result and I think I know why, but could use any criticism.
https://www.astrobin.com/0zrmfg/
This is the Witch's Head and includes Rigel. Most of it was shot from a Bortle 7 location, and the resulting stacks had very, very little nebula detail. I managed to get one night at a Bortle 3 site (about 5.5 hours, it is setting early) and that helped bring out the nebula, but I shot all luminance that night and the R, G, and B stacks remained very poorly defined.
The result, for whatever reason, has some poorly defined stars. I saturated them quite strongly to bring them out (an earlier version in a small group received universal comments that the stars were not prominent enough), and there is patchy nebulosity (at least I hope it is real) causing large halos on some stars. Further complicating stars the NP101is did not do well in the corners (and yes, have spent may days and hours adjusting tilt and backfocus, this is about as good as I can get it). The star shapes are bad enough this won't even plate solve on astrobin, by the way.
Anyway... this is the second attempt at processing, and for the record I was aiming at something more artistic than scientific. I left a lot of glare on Rigel (though toned it down with some local curves on it), and emphasized color at the expense of some star color accuracy. And yes, for the northern hemisphere purists it is upside down -- but I wanted it to be a face in starlight!
The processing was fairly standard in PI, stack and drizzle R, G, B and L, stretch separately, combine, etc. I used BlurXTerminator to try to get better star shape with mixed success (I do not think it recognized the stars as stars in the corners). I had some 15s R, G, B stars I was going to use for replacement but I could not remove stars from the main image (both starnetv2 and starXTerminator left LOTS of them in, again I think from poor shapre). I used the LRGB combination process to increase saturation more than I normally would, for some artistic coloring.
My thinking is the main thing this needs is more low bortle time in RGB and a fresh processing run. While the detail from one night of good Luminance brought out detail, I think the mediocre R, G, B failed to get any color in the nebulosity really, and also has affected star colors so that my addition of saturation made them bloat. But... that's a theory I will only be able to test next year.
I welcome other criticism and suggestions.
Linwood
https://www.astrobin.com/0zrmfg/
This is the Witch's Head and includes Rigel. Most of it was shot from a Bortle 7 location, and the resulting stacks had very, very little nebula detail. I managed to get one night at a Bortle 3 site (about 5.5 hours, it is setting early) and that helped bring out the nebula, but I shot all luminance that night and the R, G, and B stacks remained very poorly defined.
The result, for whatever reason, has some poorly defined stars. I saturated them quite strongly to bring them out (an earlier version in a small group received universal comments that the stars were not prominent enough), and there is patchy nebulosity (at least I hope it is real) causing large halos on some stars. Further complicating stars the NP101is did not do well in the corners (and yes, have spent may days and hours adjusting tilt and backfocus, this is about as good as I can get it). The star shapes are bad enough this won't even plate solve on astrobin, by the way.
Anyway... this is the second attempt at processing, and for the record I was aiming at something more artistic than scientific. I left a lot of glare on Rigel (though toned it down with some local curves on it), and emphasized color at the expense of some star color accuracy. And yes, for the northern hemisphere purists it is upside down -- but I wanted it to be a face in starlight!
The processing was fairly standard in PI, stack and drizzle R, G, B and L, stretch separately, combine, etc. I used BlurXTerminator to try to get better star shape with mixed success (I do not think it recognized the stars as stars in the corners). I had some 15s R, G, B stars I was going to use for replacement but I could not remove stars from the main image (both starnetv2 and starXTerminator left LOTS of them in, again I think from poor shapre). I used the LRGB combination process to increase saturation more than I normally would, for some artistic coloring.
My thinking is the main thing this needs is more low bortle time in RGB and a fresh processing run. While the detail from one night of good Luminance brought out detail, I think the mediocre R, G, B failed to get any color in the nebulosity really, and also has affected star colors so that my addition of saturation made them bloat. But... that's a theory I will only be able to test next year.
I welcome other criticism and suggestions.
Linwood
