[RCC] The Rosette Nebula

Very nice image. It leans a little too much towards purples for my tastes but that’s me.  The focus is sharp but the stars seem a little bloated or like the filter has created a halo issue. Not sure but perhaps SETI Astro’s Halo B Gone could help.

That is an excellent result, especially since it's your first image. Great job!

You did a nice job with the non-stellar part - it's not overly denoised and the color palette is lovely.
One potential thing to improve is background extraction. It's subtle, but for me, it looks like you removed some large-scale signal from the Ha stream structure on the right side of the image. You said you used Graxpert; if you used the AI background extraction I recommend switching to DBE as the AI often mistakes diffuse signal for a gradient, if you did it manually, try being more careful about placing the points near any areas with structures.

For me, the main point of critique would be stars. In my opinion they were reduced too much, leaving a dark halo around them and making them lose most of the color. It's most severe around the edges.

Also, one thing to optimize in your workflow: don't drizzle 2x if you don't have lots of data to support increasing your resolution. It only really makes sense if you have a very high SNR. Especially if you're going to downsample later, then it's not that beneficial at all. 2x drizzle probably also worsened blurx's performance, judging by the drizzle artifacts near the bright stars.
 
These are all minor tweaks tho, as I said earlier you did a good job with the processing.
Good luck and clear skies!

Tom Fleming:
Thank you Michael and GiffS for your comments. GiffS, I had not noticed the issue with the stars, but I agree and will try Seti Astro Halo B Gone. I also agree that the color looks too purple. I should be able to fix that. At some point I will have a new version of this to upload.

I am also thinking that this image lacks a certain richness that I have seen on some other images of the Rosette. Possibly more data would help?

Tom

More data is always a plus.  I recently pointed my new set up at the Rosette and got 4 or so hours but I would like to add 8 more good no moon hours to it. Time is running out for that to happen though. What I am trying to do on those few clear, non-windy, nights I have is to shoot the Rosette early before my main target (one I can stay on all night) rises enough to make it worthwhile.  That's where having Stellarium customized to show your own backyard is worth all the hassle to set it up. I can make a pretty good plan early on.

Again this is personal preference, the red levels seem to be very prominent in the background.  You can bring them down in the Curves adjustment tool by selecting the Red channel and placing a point lower down on the line and adjusting down while leaving the highs where they are or increasing them slightly. Messing around in Curves has sometimes allowed me to get the background tamed and preserve the main subject.

OK for this version I went back to the colors that I had used previously. I think the stars and background are better but not perfect. I think I have to correct some sensor tilt, so I am going to look into that. Here is the link for the most recent revision:

https://astrob.in/8q08b4/D/

Thanks, Thomas. I agree with you. I like the stars and the background  better in the latest version, but I did not quite duplicate the color and contrast of the second revision. I think I will wait until I am able to get more data to add before I revise it again though.