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Dust in images images - POLL on your preferences

Processing Deep Sky NGC7331 NGC Objects Galaxy
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When Processing an image where the main target isn't a dust cloud, I like to concentrate on enhancing
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Paul Ecclestone-Brown avatar
Paul Ecclestone-Brown avatar
My recent imaging of NGC7331 and Stephan's Quintet threw up some interesting challenges.  Because of the James Webb image of the IR band in the quintet, I was tempted to get as much dynamic ragnge out of the galaxies in the target, but in doing so I completely obliterated any signal from the huge amount of dust in the field of view.  I have just reprocessed the image a little more sensitively to the dust in the image, but consequently losing the ability to show detail in the main subjects of the image.



NGC7331 and Stephan's Quintet


Most of what we do is artistic (yes there is some science by some of the amazing people hunting out new planetary nebuale etc) soit is alkl a matter of of preference....


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Die Launische Diva avatar
Die Launische Diva avatar
The unevenness of your image's background can't be attributed to dust. In some places maybe, but it is hard to tell. Compare your image (left) with a deeper image (right, ~34h):

(I have registered the deeper image to yours and have applied a default linked STF at both images in PixInsight).
I think you need far more integration time (yes, I know you know that ) and to be more careful during (pre-) processing.
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Die Launische Diva avatar
Die Launische Diva avatar
Having said that, and given the limited integration time I think it is better to not push for dust with this image. Focus on neutralizing the color cast of the background, sharpen the galaxies and maybe increase the saturation of the galaxies. The framing is nice and the stars looks round and colorful (at least for my taste).

I think now I have understood the intention of your post. After a (long) integration process has finished, we press the STF button in PI and we are so excited when we can discern many faint details. We are tempting to process our image in a way that every faint detail is visible but unfortunately things doesn't end well when the faint stuff has low SNR.
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