NGC7000 and IC5070

Interested in critiques on my latest SHO image.

https://app.astrobin.com/i/oxcn9d

It’s very good and typical of what you would get with your combination of hardware and software. The only thing I can find to beef about is the stars could just more color. I’m guessing that the color you have is from narrowband only?

The stars are not good. Totally zoomed out they’re okay, but even at 1.00x zoom I can start to see issues with them. I’ll attach a photo at 5x zoom to really show the issues. I don’t know if it’s an AI thing or what caused it.

EDIT: It could be a data thing, I see it in your test one from a few weeks ago.

I do like the composition, colors, and the contrast.

📷 stars.jpg

At a distance, the image looks fine.

Getting down to the details, I agree, the stars are kinda whacky.
📷 image.png

Not exactly sure how you got here.

I would also encourage you to do less denoise in the linear process, pushing it towards the end of the process as it’s created a little splotchiness in your lower signal areas.

📷 image.png

These are little things that we pick up on the more we critique our own works…. but as a whole and from afar, I like the image. It has a neutral background color, the palette is pleasing, and the luminosity gives depth to the region. Nicely done.

I used 2X drizzle square in Pixinsight as the image was undersampled. After running BlurXT in linear I downsampled the image 2X. The stars are RGB also 2X drizzled and were merged with the Narrowband Image using Bill Blanshan’s merge RGB stars to NB.

Tony Gondola · Oct 23, 2025 at 08:52 PM
It’s very good and typical of what you would get with your combination of hardware and software. The only thing I can find to beef about is the stars could just more color. I’m guessing that the color you have is from narrowband only?

It was RGB for the stars. I used Bill Blanshan’s RGB to NB star script. I was trying to be conservative with the saturation.

Quinn Groessl · Oct 23, 2025 at 08:52 PM
The stars are not good. Totally zoomed out they’re okay, but even at 1.00x zoom I can start to see issues with them. I’ll attach a photo at 5x zoom to really show the issues. I don’t know if it’s an AI thing or what caused it.
EDIT: It could be a data thing, I see it in your test one from a few weeks ago.
I do like the composition, colors, and the contrast.
📷 stars.jpg

Working with my widefield setup the stars have been challenging. However, if you view the image at a realistic viewing distance you would not notice it.

It is a beautiful image, you should be proud of.

I would make stars a bit more prominent and the dark nebula of the Cygnus Wall less dark. This is a narrowband target mainly. I normally do RGB stars for targets like this.

Dave Stearn · Oct 24, 2025 at 04:39 AM
Quinn Groessl · Oct 23, 2025 at 08:52 PM
The stars are not good. Totally zoomed out they’re okay, but even at 1.00x zoom I can start to see issues with them. I’ll attach a photo at 5x zoom to really show the issues. I don’t know if it’s an AI thing or what caused it.
EDIT: It could be a data thing, I see it in your test one from a few weeks ago.
I do like the composition, colors, and the contrast.
📷 stars.jpg
Working with my widefield setup the stars have been challenging. However, if you view the image at a realistic viewing distance you would not notice it.

I agree. At 1x it’s noticeable, but barely. At native they look fine. Overall I like the image, I don’t think that came through in my original reply. Just that the stars need work.

<<Posted in error. Deleted.>>

Brian Puhl · Oct 23, 2025 at 09:42 PM
At a distance, the image looks fine.

Getting down to the details, I agree, the stars are kinda whacky.
📷 image.png
Not exactly sure how you got here.

I would also encourage you to do less denoise in the linear process, pushing it towards the end of the process as it’s created a little splotchiness in your lower signal areas.

📷 image.png
These are little things that we pick up on the more we critique our own works…. but as a whole and from afar, I like the image. It has a neutral background color, the palette is pleasing, and the luminosity gives depth to the region. Nicely done.

Thanks for the feedback. I think I am going to recombine the RGB stars at the native resolution. I will use the 2x drizzled for the nebula only.

That way I avoid resampling down the stars and keep them natural.

So I got the star issue resolved and will be reprocessing this image. Turns out that using the custom template in WBPP Color Calibration with Auto Detect on was causing the donut hole star issue.

I am now using Auto now instead of a custom template and it has resolved the issue.

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