Help Requested on Crescent Nebula

The color, given its a three band NB image, is definitely what stands out… Given you have both OIII and Ha, I am curious what your color mappings were? Did you map both Ha and OIII to the blue channel? If so, I think doing something to bring out the distinction between those two channels would help,  regardless of what palette you choose. Right now, there is no telling the difference between Ha and OIII, which I do think probably detracts from the image. 

Another thing that stands out, is the stars all have mostly a white or very nearly white color. That may indeed be the result of the same issue, if Ha and OIII were mapped to the same channels. I do think that getting at least some diversity in the star colors, even if its not a lot, would help the image as well. The stars definitely have a mostly monochromatic presentation which I think is probably also a detractor.

Slightly random question but curious why you are at the limit of your mount?  The AM5 handles twice the weight of the FF130 and even with guide scope and cameras etc aren’t you well within the capacity limit?

Andrew Topper:
Looking for input on this image. It was taken in Bortle 8 with a new scope: FF130. The scope is about at the limit of the mount. Crescent Nebula:  https://astrob.in/x5svip/0/


Thanks in advance.

Hello Andrew,
1st very nice image here good round stars and nice fov. I would have some suggestions for you on this but very much agree with the others here.

1st more integration time would defiantly help you out but for the time you have its not bad. Even if you doubled the amount of integration time you’ll see a difference in the image as far as SN and I think you’ll find it will make your processing go a tad bit better/easier. It will also allow you to do a bit more sharpening on the internal structure of the nebula.

2nd you don’t see much in the way of a channel separation between your HA & OIII. I’m guessing you were shooting for something like an SHO, HSO or something along that line??? FWIW I shot this in a much wider field of view here a couple weeks ago. If your interested here is my HSO version with RGB stars for color: https://www.astrobin.com/uqfj83/D/.
Like others have mentioned an HOO version will give you a much more distinct channel separation so that you can see the Oiii bubble/shell around the actual nebula or “brain” part of the object. Here is my HOO version as well if your interested to look at it: https://www.astrobin.com/uqfj83/D/

3rd as @Jon Rista pointed out your stars really don’t have much in the way of color but you can very easily remedy that one. My suggestion would be to just take some short exposures in RGB and combine them. Obviously you would need to register them so everything is aligned but when you go starless just use these RGB color stars for the recombination of your starless and stars layer. There are many ways to add more color to your stars but my favorite way is to pull a luminance on the combined RGB star layer and add it back in LRGB combination and bump up the saturation to say around .38 an add it back a few times. You’ll need to play with it to find that happy medium for your star color.

All this said as I mentioned in the beginning, this is a very nice start, I think you could do better if you map your colors/channel a bit better. 

This is just my 2 cents.

Good luck but have fun!

Dale

Thank you all. I agree that more integration time would add to the image. I usually try to get at least two nights worth and ideally three if weather and time permits. With the channel separation, I have to come clean. I've been using some Pixel math in Pixinsight from James Lamb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGMRn-fMVV8. I see now that I'll either have to try to mess with the pixel math or use a different method to pull out more contrast. I will also try HOO and see what results I can get.

I did put a lot of work into RGB stars on my last target https://astrob.in/ov0fhi/0/. I think I'll have to add more RGB time to my SHO images. For those of you that do RGB stars how much time do you dedicate to just the stars?

@Dale Penkala  I saw your image just before choosing this target for the new moon and it inspired me to go for the crescent over some other targets I was considering. 

Thanks again
Andrew

Did some research and found the Foraxx Palette script. I've applied that palette to my data and updated the image:

Cresent Nebula

I think this addresses my channel problem and even gave some color to the stars. Not sure I'm not 100% done yet but headed in a better direction.

Nice – but I think the framing could be improved so that you got the entire Soap Bubble PN in there.  In this image you get just about half of it on the left edge.  I always look for the Soap Bubble in Crescent N. images.  It's quite subtle.